“The Escape Artist” written by Jonathan Freedland is the heroic story of Rudolf “Rudy” Vrba and Fred Wetzler’s harrowing escape from the Nazi Concentration Camp at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.

After experiencing the horrors of Auschwitz on various crews in the camp he soon understood that these Nazi concentration camps were not re-settlement camps as the Nazis claimed but they were death camps implementing “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” After the Soviet Union’s invasion of Germany in July 1941, Adolf Hitler empowered SS chief Heinrich Himmler with broad authority to physically eliminate any and all presumed threats against Germany. Two weeks after the invasion, Nazi leader Hermann Goering authorized SS General Reinhard Heydrich to begin carrying out “The Final Solution” at Auschwitz, murdering millions of incoming Jews into the camp.

Vrba believed that the plan by the Nazis would fail if the Jewish deportees resisted en masse the efforts to kill them. He had already witnessed millions who trusted their captors as they claimed walking into the gas chamber that it was for delousing and sanitary reasons to wash them and ready them for their re-settlement. Reluctantly believing them, the prisoners were then murdered by the thousands and their bodies were then immediately cremated to dispose of the evidence. Vrba’s plan was to escape and then draft a report with Jewish religious leaders of the routine murder at the death camps and spread it to all Jewish groups in Europe so that they would begin to resist the deportations and hopefully save as many Jews as possible from the fate that already had doomed many million Jews before them.

This book was very detailed and heavily researched. It is a grim account of a dark time in human history. It is also a very important book for future generations to read and understand the evil of the Nazis and their systematic annihilation of the Jewish people from an entire continent. It is a must-read.

Get a copy of “The Escape Artist” by Jonathan Freedland from Amazon here.