by Jonathan Freedland ★★★★☆
The Escape Artist is the story of Walter Rosenberg, who later took the name Rudolf Vrba, and was responsible for one of the most detailed accounts of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. Rosenberg was born in 1924, a Jew who grew up in Czechoslovakia until at the age of 17 he was identified for "resettlement" because of his Jewish heritage. Before long, he would find himself in Auschwitz.
Walter's sole desire and motivation while imprisoned was to stay alive and ultimately escape so that he could warn others, believing that if he was able to do so, he could save countless lives by alerting the Allies and spurring them to military action, and warning Jews throughout Europe in the hopes they would be able to avoid the fate he saw befall so many others.
What follows is not only the extremely detailed account of his time in Auschwitz and Birkenau, but also what happened following his escape. Walter (along with his fellow escapee) took great pains to memorize minute details -- dates, numbers of people murdered, from where transports arrived with prisoners, the inner workings of the camp -- and consolidated all of that into what became known as the "Vrba-Wetzler Report".
Author Freedland does a commendable job of tracing how that report was disseminated throughout Europe and the world, finding its way to world leaders through a variety of means. He also explores the many ways that report didn't achieve what Vrba hoped it would. Despite the specificity of the report, many Allies and Jews simply didn't believe it. Because no one at the time had ever heard of such atrocities, the most common reaction to the report was that this could not possibly be true, despite the glaring authenticity of the details.
As Freedland states, "A horror is especially hard to comprehend if no one has ever witnessed anything like it before." He recounts one exchange that helps drive home this point, between Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter and a man who had been undercover in the Warsaw Ghetto, and who as early as December 1942 had reported on the mass murders taking place. Frankfurter, upon hearing of the atrocities, says, "I do not believe you." When the credibility of the information begins to be defended, Frankfurter explains further, saying, "I did not say that he is lying. I said that I don't believe him. These are different things. My mind and heart are made in such a way that I cannot accept it. No. No. No."
Needless to say, this is a difficult read that's sure to provoke anger and frustration in any reader, not just for the obvious Nazi horrors, but also for the level of inaction and excuses that prevented it from being stopped in a more timely manner. For a topic that has thousands of books written about it, it follows that The Escape Artist could feel redundant versus additive. However, few people outside of scholars of the period know the name Rudolf Vrba; Freedland believes it should be otherwise, and I tend to agree.
So why isn't this a 5-star book? For me, it came down to the book's construction. Freedland (or his editor) chose to open the book with the details of how Vrba and Wetzler managed to escape. Keeping that a mystery up until the point of the event, and crafting a picture of the impossibility of the escape would have built more tension in the book. Freedland also credits Vrba and Wetzler with "saving the lives of 200,000 Jews in Budapest". For such a monumental event, it didn't receive the crescendo and focus I think it deserved. Freedland covered swiftly in 4 or 5 pages how the Vrba-Wetzler report and information finally generated the necessary action (and threats) to halt the deportations, but spent dozens of pages on less monumental things (for example: Vrba's relationship with his first wife). Freedland also later goes on to reveal that political and religious leaders knew about the atrocities at Auschwitz well before Vrba and Wetzler created their report (a whole other kind of depressing fact), somewhat invalidating his argument that the information provided by these two escapees was the sole reason for Hungary ultimately ceasing deportations.
All-in-all, this is a difficult and depressing -- but important -- read, particularly if this is a part of history you have not delved deeply into before.