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Rudolf Vrba was born as Walter Rosenberg in Topolcany, Czechoslovakia in on September 11, 1924 as the son of Elias Rosenberg (owner of a steam saw-mill in Jaklovce near Margecany in Slovakia), and Helena neé Grunfeldova of Zbehy, Slovakia. At the age of fifteen he was excluded from the High School (Gymnasium) of Bratislava under the so-called "Slovak State's" version of the Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws and forced to study at home.

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Early in March 1942, in rebellion against the deportation laws, Vrba ripped the yellow Star of David off his clothes and left his Czechoslovakian home in a  taxi, heading for Britain via Hungary.

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The story of Rudolf Vrba - Revolt & Resistance www.HolocaustResearchProject.org

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Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team

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Vrba met a fellow prisoner by the name of Alfred Wetzler, Wetzler was 24 years old at the time and the two men became extremely close friends. The men came to trust each other implicitly and decided to try to escape together.

 

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The "Farm Work" consisted of excavating the bodies (for later burning), of over 100,000 prisoners that had already  been murdered and buried at Birkenau. This horrific labour almost took his life, however his luck changed when a Viennese prisoner, trusted by the SS, discovered he could speak German and transferred him to a store-room, named Canada, where the clothing and belongings of the dead were sorted. 

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Rudolf Vrba on the Resistance in Auschwitz (Shoah, 1985)

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Rudolf Vrba, who is survived by his second wife and a daughter, died on March 27, at the age of 81, one month before his book was due to be republished in Britain under the title I Escaped from Auschwitz.

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In 1967 Vrba moved to the University of British Columbia, where, after a two year sabbatical at Harvard Medical School, he became professor of pharmacology. He went on to produce 50 research papers on the chemistry of the brain, diabetes and cancer. Over the years Vrba was also asked to lecture on the Holocaust and to take part in several television documentaries such as The World At War for Thames Television in 1973 and he was also featured in the film Shoah by Claude Lanzmann in 1985.

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The other prisoners placed boards around the hollowed-out area to hide the men, then sprinkled the surrounding area with a strong smelling Russian tobacco that was soaked in petrol, then dried and would help to  keep the guard dogs away. This was a trick they had learned from a Russian POW Dmitry Volkov, who had escaped Auschwitz but had been recaptured.

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When the report was completed The Slovak Judenrat gave Vrba papers in the name of Rudolf Vrba, showing that he was a "pure Aryan" going back three generations, and supported him financially to the tune of 200 Slovak crowns per week, equivalent to an average worker's salary, and as Vrba wrote, "sufficient to sustain me in an illegal life in Bratislava."