Amazon.com Review
An Amazon Best Book of October 2022:The Escape Artist opens with one of the most riveting chapters you will read any time soon. Two young men are attempting to escape from Auschwitz as Nazi soldiers search for them, and come narrowly close to finding them. Rudolph Vrba was a brilliant young man who became one of only four people to escape Auschwitz. But that is just the beginning of the story. He set back for his native Slovakia; then he set out to warn the world of the atrocities he had witnessed. The author Jonathan Freedland deserves mention here, because he takes a fascinating story about an important if forgotten man in history—and he keeps the story from becoming one dimensional. Vrba was indeed a hero, but much of his effort to warn the world fell on deaf ears. And Vrba was himself a man of contradictions. I enjoyed this book immensely. And I was moved by it. I would not be surprised if it becomes a best seller. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Editor
Product Description
"A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information—and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?" — Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust . . .
Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the astonishing true story of Rudolf Vrba, the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of a truth too few were willing to hear.
In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom—among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen—a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope.
And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more.
This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man—a gifted “escape artist” who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust.
Review
"A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information - and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?" — Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
“I thought I knew the Auschwitz story, but Freedland retells it from a fresh angle so powerfully that I read it with my heart beating fast, full of horror, rage, despair – and admiration for this potent demonstration of the stubborn resilience of the human spirit.” — Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of The Girl with the Pearl Earring
"Rudolf Vrba's life story not only meticulously recounts the truth, it also shows the unwillingness and inability of people to accept it. The past isn't over, and Jonathan Freedland's well-researched and compelling book is the irrefutable proof of that." — Roxane van Iperen, author of the New York Times bestselling The Sisters of Auschwitz
"A powerful story of one man’s resilience in the face of extreme evil and the price we pay when indifference rules our response." — Rosemary Sullivan, bestsell
