64 Facts About Rudolf Vrba

Rudolf Vrba escaped from the camp in April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote a detailed report about the mass murder taking place there.

Rudolf Vrba argued until the end of his life that the deportees might have refused to board the trains, or at least that their panic would have disrupted the transports, had the report been distributed sooner and more widely.

Rudolf Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg on 11 September 1924 in Topolcany, Czechoslovakia, one of the four children of Helena Rosenberg, nee Gruenfeldova, and her husband, Elias.

Rudolf Vrba's mother was from Zbehy; his maternal grandfather, Bernat Grunfeld, an Orthodox Jew from Nitra, was murdered in the Majdanek concentration camp.

When Rudolf Vrba was excluded, at age 15, from the gymnasium in Bratislava as a result of the restrictions, he found work as a labourer and continued his studies at home, particularly chemistry, English and Russian.

Rudolf Vrba met his future wife, Gerta Sidonova, around this time; she had been excluded from school.

Rudolf Vrba wrote that he learned to live with the restrictions but rebelled when the Slovak government announced, in February 1942, that thousands of Jews were to be deported to "reservations" in German-occupied Poland.

Rudolf Vrba blamed the Slovak Jewish Council for having cooperated with the deportations.

Rudolf Vrba was deported from Czechoslovakia on 15 June 1942 to the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, German-occupied Poland, where he briefly encountered his older brother, Sammy.

Rudolf Vrba encountered "kapos" for the first time: prisoners appointed as functionaries, one of whom he recognized from Trnava.

Rudolf Vrba considered trying to escape from the train, but the SS announced that ten men would be shot for every one who went missing.

On his second day in Auschwitz, Rudolf Vrba watched as prisoners threw bodies onto a cart, stacked in piles of ten, "the head of one between the legs of another to save space".

Young and strong, Rudolf Vrba was "purchased" by a kapo, Frank, in exchange for a lemon and assigned to work in the SS food store.

Rudolf Vrba told Claude Lanzmann in 1978 that the process relied on speed and making sure no panic broke out, because panic meant the next transport would be delayed.

The Aufraumungskommando lived in Auschwitz I, block 4, until 15 January 1943 when they were transferred to block 16 in Auschwitz II, sector Ib, where Rudolf Vrba lived until June 1943.

In early 1943 Rudolf Vrba was given the job of assistant registrar in one of the blocks; he told Lanzmann that the resistance movement had manoeuvered him into the position because it gave him access to information.

Rudolf Vrba was able to speak to new arrivals who had been selected to work, and he had to write reports about the registration process, which allowed him to ask questions and take notes.

From his room in BIIa, Rudolf Vrba said he could see the trucks drive toward the gas chambers.

Rudolf Vrba's estimates are higher than those of Holocaust historians but in line with estimates from SS officers and Auschwitz survivors, including members of the Sonderkommando.

Rudolf Vrba's first escape was planned for 26 January 1944 with Charles Unglick, a French Army captain, but the rendezvous did not work out; Unglick tried to escape alone and was killed.

On 6 March 1944 Rudolf Vrba heard that the Czech family camp was about to be sent to the gas chambers.

Rudolf Vrba told the historian John Conway that he had used "personal memotechnical methods" to remember the data, and that the stories about written notes had been invented because no one could explain his ability to recall so much detail.

Rudolf Vrba wrote that there was no organized help for them on the outside.

Rudolf Vrba described the ramp, selection, the Sonderkommando, and the camps' internal organization; the building of Auschwitz III and how Jews were being used as slave labour for Krupp, Siemens, IG Farben, and DAW; and the gas chambers.

Rudolf Vrba handed over the label from the Zyklon B canister.

The report was rewritten several times over three days; according to Wetzler, on two of those days, he and Rudolf Vrba wrote until daybreak.

Rudolf Vrba had seen, as Vrba found out after the war, the Polish major's report about Auschwitz.

The Jewish Council gave Vrba papers in the name of Rudolf Vrba, showing Aryan ancestry going back three generations, and supported him financially with 200 Slovak crowns per week, equivalent to an average worker's salary; Vrba wrote that it was "sufficient to sustain me underground in Bratislava".

Rudolf Vrba joined the Slovak partisans in September 1944 and was later awarded the Czechoslovak Medal of Bravery.

In 1945 Rudolf Vrba met up with a childhood friend, Gerta Sidonova from Trnava.

Rudolf Vrba later said that he had been unable to continue living in Israel because the same men who had, in his view, betrayed the Jewish community in Hungary were now in positions of power there.

Rudolf Vrba became a British subject by naturalization on 4 August 1966.

Rudolf Vrba testified against Robert Mulka of the SS at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, telling the court that he had seen Mulka on the Judenrampe at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The court found that Rudolf Vrba "made an excellent and intelligent impression" and would have been particularly observant at the time because he was planning to escape.

Erich Kulka criticized the book in 1985 for minimizing the role played by the other three escapees ; Kulka disagreed with Rudolf Vrba regarding his criticism of Zionists, the Slovak Jewish Council, and Israel's first president.

Rudolf Vrba moved to Canada in 1967, where he worked for the Medical Research Council of Canada from 1967 to 1973, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1972.

Rudolf Vrba worked there until the early 1990s, publishing over 50 research papers on brain chemistry, diabetes, and cancer.

Rudolf Vrba testified in January 1985, along with Raul Hilberg, at the seven-week trial in Toronto of the German Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel.

Zundel's lawyer, Doug Christie, tried to undermine Rudolf Vrba by requesting ever more detailed descriptions, then presenting any discrepancy as significant.

When Rudolf Vrba told Christie he was not willing to discuss his book unless the jury had read it, the judge reminded him not to give orders.

Rudolf Vrba wrote about the meeting in an essay, "The Ultimate Fear of the Traveler Returning from Hell", for his book Pieta.

Rudolf Vrba disagreed with Vrba's allegations about Kastner; Klein had seen Kastner at work in the Jewish Council offices in Budapest, where Klein had worked as a secretary, and he viewed Kastner as a hero.

Rudolf Vrba said that Klein's experience illustrated his point: distributing the report via informal channels had lent it no authority.

Rudolf Vrba told him about a colleague who had seen him in Lanzmann's film and asked whether what the film had discussed was true.

Rudolf Vrba died of cancer, aged 81, on 27 March 2006 in hospital in Vancouver.

Rudolf Vrba was survived by his first wife, Gerta Vrbova; his second wife, Robin Vrba; his daughter, Zuza Vrbova Jackson; and his grandchildren, Hannah and Jan Rudolf Vrba was pre-deceased by his elder daughter, Dr Helena Vrbova, who died in 1982 in Papua New Guinea during a malaria research project.

Robin Vrba made a gift of Vrba's papers to the Franklin D Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in New York.

Several documentaries have told Rudolf Vrba's story, including Genocide, directed by Michael Darlow for ITV in the UK; Auschwitz and the Allies, directed by Rex Bloomstein and Martin Gilbert for the BBC; and Claude Lanzmann's Shoah.

Rudolf Vrba was featured in Witness to Auschwitz, directed by Robin Taylor for the CBC in Canada; Auschwitz: The Great Escape for the UK's Channel Five; and Escape From Auschwitz for PBS in the United States.

In January 2020 a PBS film Secrets of the Dead: Bombing Auschwitz presented a reconstruction of Rudolf Vrba's escape, with David Moorst as Rudolf Vrba and Michael Fox as Wetzler.

In 2022, Rudolf Vrba was the subject of The Escape Artist a biography by Jonathan Freedland detailing Rudolf Vrba's life, escape and its aftermath, and his life after the war.

For having fought during the Slovak National Uprising, Rudolf Vrba was awarded the Czechoslovak Medal for Bravery, the Order of Slovak National Insurrection, and the Medal of Honor of Czechoslovak Partisans.

British historian Martin Gilbert supported an unsuccessful campaign in 1992 to have Rudolf Vrba awarded the Order of Canada.

Similarly, Bauer proposed unsuccessfully that Rudolf Vrba be awarded an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University.

Rudolf Vrba stated that warning the Hungarian community was one of the motives for his escape.

Rudolf Vrba said that in January 1944 a kapo had told him the Germans were building a new railway line to bring the Jews of Hungary directly into Auschwitz II.

Rudolf Vrba had argued strongly for the inclusion of the Hungarian deportations, he wrote, but he recalled Oskar Krasniansky, who translated the report into German, saying that only actual deaths should be recorded, not speculation.

Alfred Wetzler's memoirs, Escape from Hell, say that he and Rudolf Vrba told the Slovakian Jewish Council about the new ramp, the expectation of half a million Hungarian Jews, and the mention of Hungarian salami.

In taking part in these negotiations, Rudolf Vrba argued, the SS was simply placating the Jewish leadership to avoid rebellion within the community.

In I Cannot Forgive, Rudolf Vrba drew attention to the 1954 trial in Jerusalem of Malchiel Gruenwald, a Hungarian Jew living in Israel.

Rudolf Vrba referred to Jewish leaders in Slovakia and Hungary as "quislings" who were essential to the smooth running of the deportations: "The creation of Quislings, voluntary or otherwise, was, in fact, an important feature of Nazi policy" in every occupied country, in his view.

Rudolf Vrba called this "one of the great tragedies of the era".

Rudolf Vrba is described as "the head of these mockers", although the introduction makes clear that his heroism is "beyond doubt".

Rudolf Vrba's memoir was not translated into Hebrew until 1998,35 years after its publication in English.