The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

This biography resurrects the life of Walter Rosenberg, also remembered as Rudolf Vrba, the man who escaped from Auschwitz with Fredrick Wetzler in the spring of 1944 to produce the much acclaimed Auschwitz Report. If the book was only about the escape itself, the story would make a gripping thriller, but Freedland gives us much more.

Exceptionally well researched, Freedland explores the man himself–the unstable childhood that formed a boy into the sort of young man capable of fending for himself in a hostile environment. With particular attention to detail, Freedland describes the constriction of Europe under Nazi rule and the formation of the great deception put in place to exterminate the Jews.

More than half of the book delves into the question of what brand of knowledge it takes to produce outright revolution against those in power. The life of Vrba exemplifies a belief that if a person is only armed with the knowledge of certain destruction that person will naturally take measures of self-preservation. However, the facts unearthed by Freedland prove contrary to Vrba’s assumption, which makes this book much more than a thriller.