# data[].attributes.headline
Rudolf and Wetzler 70th Anniversary of the escape 

# data[].attributes.subject
Rudolf and Wetzler 70th Anniversary of the escape 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rudolf Vrba, Alfred Wetzler, 70th anniversary of the escape from Auschwitz

# data[].attributes.body
Vrba later emigrated Britain, where he worked at the Neuropsychiatric Research Unit at Carshalton, Surrey, and then for the Medical Research Council. He gave testimony
trial and also wrote a series of articles for the Daily Herald, which led to his vivid memoir, I Cannot Forgive

# data[].attributes.body
Vrba, Rudolf. I Escaped from Auschwitz, Barricade Books, 2002
German Extermination Camps—Auschwitz and Birkenau -Executive Office of the U.S. War Refugee Board
Gutman, Yisrael. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. Macmillan Publishing Company. ISBN 0-02-896090-4
Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press
Holocaust Historical Society
Yad Vashem
Hilberg, Raul. " The Destruction of the European Jews " Yale University Press, 2003 edition.
Escaping Auschwitz. A culture of forgetting, Cornell University Press by Linn Ruth
US National Archives
Bilsky, Leora. "Judging Evil in the Trial of Kastner", Law and History Review, Vol 19, No. 1, Spring 2001

# data[].attributes.body
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.

# data[].attributes.headline
One of the sketches made by Rudolf Vrba of the operations at Birkenau

# data[].attributes.subject
One of the sketches made by Rudolf Vrba of the operations at Birkenau

# data[].attributes.headline
Rudolf Vrba on the resistance in Auschwitz (Shoah 1985)

# data[].attributes.subject
Rudolf Vrba on the resistance in Auschwitz (Shoah 1985)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rudolf Vrba on the Resistance in Auschwitz (Shoah, 1985)

# data[].attributes.body
Sorting goods in "Canada" where Vrba worked in Birkenau

"From the testimony of survivors such as Elie Wiesel, it seems clear that the Jewish masses assumed that if something truly horrible was in store for them, these respectable leaders would know about it and would share their knowledge ... It is my contention that a small group of informed people, by their silence, deprived others of the possibility or privilege of making their own decisions in the face of mortal danger."

After handing being interviewed, Vrbda and Wetzler compiled a full report. This report was turned over to the Slovakian Jewish Council.

# data[].attributes.body
Two weeks after escaping from Auschwitz, on April, 1944, Vrba and Wetzler met up with members of the Slovakian underground Working Group, or Jewish Council. The head of the Working Group, Dr. Oskar Neumann, a German-speaking lawyer, placed the men in separate rooms and asked them to begin writing down and describing their accounts.

Eleven days after escaping, Vrba and Wetzler crossed the Polish-Slovakian border. They met a farmer who put them in touch with a Jewish doctor, Dr. Pollack, who had a contact, Adre Steiner, in the Slovak Judenrat (Jewish Council) in Žilina, which now called itself the Working Group, and regarded itself as an underground movement.

Vrba and Wetzler spent the night in Čadca in the home of Mrs. Baeck, a relative of the well-known rabbi Leo Baeck, and met the Working Group the next day, April 24, 1944. The head of the Working Group, Dr. Oskar Neumann, a German-speaking lawyer, placed the men in different rooms in a former Jewish old people's home, and interviewed them separately over three days.

Vrba believed that many of the 437,000 Hungarian Jews sent to Auschwitz between May 15 and July 7, 1944 — when 12,000 Jews were being dispatched by train every day — would have resisted or hidden had they known they were to be killed and not resettled.

# data[].attributes.body
The "Farm Work" consisted of digging the bodies (for burning), A lot of prisoners had already been murdered.
When a Viennese prisoner, trusted by the SS, discovered he could speak German and transferred him to a store-room, where the dead bodies clothes are stored.

Although after being caught smuggling some goods to friends, Vrba rose to become a camp registrar, and he began calculate and "mentally record" the figures of those transported to, and murdered.

Vrba met a fellow prisoner by the name of Alfred Wetzler, at the time and the two men became close friends and try to escape together.

With the help of the camp underground, the two men climbed inside a hollowed-out hiding place in a wood pile. It was outside Birkenau's barbed-wire inner perimeter, but inside an external perimeter the Nazi guards kept erected.

The other prisoners placed boards around the area, then sprinkled the surrounding area with a strong smelling Russian tobacco to  keep the guard dogs away. This was a trick learned from Volkov, who had escaped Auschwitz but recaptured.
At the evening, the commander of Auschwitz II, was informed by that two Jews had escaped.

# data[].attributes.body
"I escaped from Auschwitz"

# data[].attributes.headline
About Rudolf Vrba (before going to Auschwitz)

# data[].attributes.subject
About Rudolf Vrba (before going to Auschwitz)

# data[].attributes.body
Rudolf Vrba was born as Walter Rosenberg in Topolcany, Czechoslovakia in on September 11, 1924 as the son of Elias Rosenberg. At the age of fifteen he was excluded from the High School of Bratislava under the so-called "Slovak State's" version of the Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws and forced to study at home.

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, Heading for Britain via Hungary. Later, having been intercepted by frontier guards, he was first sent to the Novaky transition camp in Slovakia, where  he tried to escape, but was recaptured by a policeman on who had become suspicious of the young man who was wearing two pairs of socks.

On June, 1942, he was deported first to Majdanek where he met with his brother "Sammy". After being "duped" into volunteering for what was represented as a "Work Farm" assignment he trasferred to Auschwitz on June , 1942. After six months in Auschwitz, he was transferred to Birkenau (Auschwitz II) and had the number 44070 tattooed on his arm.