This is the most important holocaust book that I have read 26/2/24
2000 The author realized that Rudolf Vrba's first wife Gerta lived in London she was aged 93. She gave him a pile of letters from Walter Rosenberg (born 1924). His 2nd wife the widow Robin was in New York and talked to him about the post war man she was married to.
The head of the Slovakian government head was Catholic priest Father Jozef Tiso, the state religion of this infant republic was Nazism The Jewish community was 89,000 Slovakia had gained autonomy in December 1938 under the Nazis.
The Hlinka Guard were Slovakia's state police and most willingly helped Hitler with his plans. It operated against Jews, Czechs, Hungarians,
Walter Rosenberg and his mother moved to Trnava 30 km from Bratislava a town that smelt from the sugar beet factory. He though he could join Josip Titos partisan's in Yugoslavia.
For every Jew deported Bratislava handed Berlin 500 Reichsmarks officially to cover the costs.
When Walter was eventually caught youth his age had been deported early so that they could not cause trouble now it was adults with children. At Zwardon the Slovakian, Polish border the Hlinka Guards handed them over to SS Nazi's who now took charge. At Lublin they were marched via backstreets to the camp of Majdanek.
The chapter on life in Auschwitz I never read as it is too upsetting but because Walter knew languages he worked his way into a clerical position keeping records of who came in. He was one of the most informed people of what was happening.
The Escape
They hid in the outer field in a hole that their friend covered with a pile of planks. They had Soviet Cigarettes soaked in petrol that would act as a repellant against the dogs. An escaped prisoner resulted in the SS searching the outer field for 3 days. At night only the inner watch tower were operated.
Most of the people who managed to escape Auschwitz were Poles whose conditions were not as bad but no Jew had escaped. A Russian informed him that a man can live on potatoes and salt for month. You must take matches to cook stolen food and a watch to double as a compass. Travel at night and stay hidden in the day. Find a hiding place before dawn breaks. Trust nobody and share your plans with nobody. There was a network of informers amongst the poisoners. A German by himself is a fragile human being.
They headed for Slovakia a place where their accents would not betray them. Silesia had once been Polish but the Polish population had been driven out and Ethnic Germans replaced them.
On the escape some people though they were Soviet POWs escaping. In Slovakia the Jewish doctors were given a reprieve and many were in rural areas.
They got to Cadena where Mrs. Beck gave them shelter she was related to Leo Baeck the eminent Rabbi.
Walter Rosenberg and Fred Wentzler now revealed about Auschwitz. The Jewish Council had been the enabler s of the Nazi's. Of a group 2000 French Jews executed they had seen the younger brother of Leon Blum.
Walter now took on the name Rudolf Vrba who had been a influential Catholic priest.
1944 March The German army moved in to Hungary deal with the Jews. The regent Miklos Horthy had made antisemitism a key part of his program. The Calvinist church protected 100,000 Christians of Jewish origin. The Protestant leadership was considering and edict of denying communion to anyone who helped rounding up Jews or detain members of the resistance. Perhaps the Cardinal could issue a ruling like this in the name of Hungary's Catholics. " The pope himself does not undertake to do anything against Hitler."
When Walter met the Cardinal Martilotti who was not moved by what was happening to Jews, he told him about Catholic priest shot and then brought to Birkenau in boxes to be disposed of . The cardinal was now shocked and almost fainted.
1944 23 June. Garrett contact Alan Dulles of the US intelligence who ran the Swiss bureau. BBC reported in Check and Slovak . In the US the head of the Office of the War information refused to authorize publication.
Oskar Krasnansky had appended a after word to the report calling on the Allies to bomb the crematoria and the roads leading to it. Mc Cloy instructed that they kill this bombing idea and that the best hope for the victims was the defeat of Nazism. The US does not want to see Jews killed by US bombes.
The US airforces bombed Monowitz. Siemen's, Krupp and I G Fabens had factories here and the concentration camp was a subcamp of Auschwitz. The US airforce photographed over Auschwiths and this proved every word of the Vrba Wetzler Report. This report got to London from a few sources and Chaim Weitzman and Moshe Shertok got it. It was now in Churchills hands.
The Americans bombed by day and the Brits by night only the Americans were capable of doing it. If Hungarian Jews knew they would stampeded away in panic and there would be ungovernable mayhem.
Reszo Kasztner and the Jewish leadership said this is the fertile imagination of 2 rash young men. The leader resolved to do nothing that would spread alarm.
In Slovakia the Jewish community negotiated directly with Eichmann and Dieter Wisliceny they paid $45000 and Slovak deportation stopped temporary till autumn 1944 for Germany's own reasons. Kastner may have shown the document to Eichmann who said that the 2 should be captured and if it was exposed the Nazi negotiation about Kasztner train would be cut off. 1700 boarded Kastners train many from his home town Kolozavar $1,684000 were paid to the Germans. 500 postcards arrived from Jews resettled in Auschwitz but this was a trick. Kasztner did not allow the postcards to be distributed but nor did he allow the publication of the Vrba Wetzler Report.
The Nazis conducted the largest and swiftest deportation operation437,402 Jews were transported on 147 trains. Next the Nazis set their sights on Budapest's 200,000Jews.
In Bratislava Josef Weiss worked in the Office of the Prevention of Venereal Disease where the authorities did not investigate and they printed copies of the report there. The report got to Miklos Horty the regent of Hungary. Roosevelt had his Secretary of State deliver a message to Horthy. The king of Sweden Gustav V also wrote to Horthy a warning and Horthy said the deportation must stop as nobody wanted to be a war criminal. There now ensued a power struggle in the Hungarian government. Hungarian police were sent into close of the Jewish area so they couldn't escape.
1944 2nd July the US 15th Air force bombed in and around Budapest their target was factories south of the city.
Hungary's ruling circles it appeared that Roosevelt was making good his threat to hold the political leadership responsible. So Horthy instructed his chief military commander to prevent the deportation of Budapest's Jews. One train was even turned around by Horthy's orders. Germany began to look like it was losing the war.
1944 August the Nazi's invade Slovakia and trains started heading to Auschwitz.
1944 Autumn Horthy was toppled and the Arrow Cross the Nazi party took over.
People did their best to escape and Rudi joined the partisans under Milan Uher where he won a Medal for bravery.
War over he went to the Czech Technical University in Prague to study chemical technology. Status of being an ex partisan enabled him to get a flat. He got a PhD in chemistry of the brain.
Rudi was a paranoid person, never trusting anyone perhaps this had caused his survival.
1946 Rudi visited Bratislava where he joined up with Wetzler, Moroowicz and Rosin the only 4 who had escaped from Auschwitz.
The annual commemoration of the anti Fascist Union Fighter nobody mentioned the fate of the Jews.
Ruby was the first Czechoslovak biologist to have won Soviet recognition and was rewarded with a passport travelled to Denmark ,Ukraine and Russia and came back each time.
1958 When he applied to go to a convention in Strasbourg and Vienna he went to the airport and his passport was handed back to him from the Ministry of Science. His wife and children left at the same time and crossed the border and defected . Rudi flew to Israel and worked at Beit Dagan's Veterinary research institute.
He did not like the fact that Kasztner was a government official in Israel. Grunewald accused Kasztner of collaborating with the Nazi and Grunewald was sued for criminal libel.. Hannah Arendt said this the darkest chapter in a dark story of the role played by Jewish leaders in the holocaust. Kasztner crime was his failure to share knowledge, and this judgement caused the government of Israel to fall. Kasztner was assassinator in the street.
After 18 months in Israel he found out his wife Gerta and children were in England and went there in 1960. Gerta was living with Sidney Hilton as husband and wife.
1960 May. Eichmann was brought to Israel. Rudi now was approached by the Daily Herald who did a 5 part series on Eichmann by Alan Bestic on Rudi's information. Because he couldn't get into the US for being a Communist during Mc McCarthyism he was given a position in Vancouver by a Communist's group despite the fact that by now he was very anti Communist. He was appointed for 2 years as a visiting lectureship at Harvard Medical School.
1975 married 24 year old Robin Lipson, so he needed a women from a different generation and different continent. He would not talk to her about Auschwitz so she had to find his memoir in the Boston public library. On seeing a tatoo number on a waiter arm told him that he must have been a Jew from Bedzin, Poland, who arrived at Auschwitz in the summer of 1943.
In Nazi trials he showed that he was fluent in multiple languages and had an exceptional memory of the mass murder from beginning till end . The Nazis had taken pains so that nobody could understand the full process. He was in touch with Simon Wiesenthal especially about Nazi criminals in Canada.
1985Ernst Zundel was tried under a criminal code for false news a tract called "Did 6 million Jews Really Die" Rudi was a central witness and the truth of the holocaust was on trial.
1981 Martin Gilbert wrote a book Auschwitz and the Allies and he was a principal source. He advised on the World at War series and the Shoah by Claude Lanzmann.
Josef Lanik's book Co Dante Nevidel ( What Dante didn't see) he was portrayed as the leading character.
The Zionist movement like every other, produced both saints and sinners while under the Nazi jackboot. Zionists led the armed resistant in Warsaw and Vilna Ghettoes some who saw Kasztner's case became the most anti Zionist.
Yehuda Bauer thought Rudi was a genuine hero of the holocaust but his deep hatred for Jewish leadership colored his judgement. Both Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi were writers and became famous while Rudi gave more information but did not achieve their fame.
His daughter Helena became a doctor and he was the last to know. She was a feminist and considered him a male chauvinist. She went to Papua New Guinee and committed suicide. (not unusual for Holocaust survivors children). 1998 Haifa University awarded him an honoree doctorate. The same year Fred Wetzier who escaped with him, died in Bratislava 'Bitter, drunk and forgotten.' As a librarian he never let on that that Jozef Lanik was his pseudonym.
Rudi's belief that once Jews understood what Auschwitz was about they would refuse to board the trains. The Nazi ambition to rid the world of Jews was no secret.
Jan Karski a Polish Aristocrat in 1943 had informed Antony Eden and Roosevelt of what he had seen of mass shooting in the Warsaw Ghetto. When supreme court Justice Felix Frankfurter met him for 20 minutes said I don't believe it. Rome had been kept informed by the apostolic nuncio Angelo Roncalli in Istanbul, who became Pope John XXIII. (1958 to 1963)
1942 Polish non Jews like Stanislav Jaster escaped and reported the killing of the Jews, or resistance fighter Witold Pilecki, but the Polish government in exile in London did not do much to publicize this. Whitehall want the British public to feel they were fighting for Britain's sake and not to save the Jews.
A panicked refusal to go or a stampede would have forced the Nazi's to hunt deer rather than sheep. The young made plans to evade deportation but the middle aged had dependents careers and property and refused to believe what they were hearing.
Allied military men said killing civilians did not make any military sense. French Jewish philosopher Raymon Aron said "I knew but I didn't believe it. And because I didn't believe it I didn't know.'
2006 Rudolf Vrba died aged 82. George Klein told him that 'you saved my like ' as I knew to run. You should be satisfied that you saved 200,000 Budapest Jews. Though he never escaped the holocaust shadow he lived a full life.
Erik Weisz a Hungarian Jew and son of a Rabbi became Harry Houdini (1874 to 1926) The greatest magician and escapist.
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