Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting

by Ruth Linn

On 7 April 1944 a Slovakian Jew, Rudolf Vrba (born Walter Rosenberg), and a fellow prisoner, Alfred Wetzler, succeeded in escaping from Auschwitz-Birkenau. As block registrars both men had been allowed relative (though always risky) freedom of movement in the camp and thus had been able to observe the massive preparations underway at Birkenau of the entire killing machine for the eradication of Europe's last remaining Jewish community, the 800,000 Jews of Hungary. The two men somehow made their way back to Slovakia where they sought out the Jewish Council (Judenrat) to warn them of the impending disaster. The Vrba-Wetzler report was the first document about the Auschwitz death camp to reach the free world and to be accepted as credible. Its authenticity broke the barrier of skepticism and apathy that had existed up to that point. However, though their critical and alarming assessment was in the hands of Hungarian Jewish leaders by April 28 or early May 1944, it is doubtful that the information it contained reached more than just a small part of the prospective victims―during May and June 1944, about 437,000 Hungarian Jews boarded, in good faith, the "resettlement" trains that were to carry them off to Auschwitz, where most of them were gassed on arrival.

Vrba, who emigrated to Canada at war's end, published his autobiography in England nearly forty years ago. Yet his and Wetzler's story has been carefully kept from Israel's Hebrew-reading public and appears nowhere in any of the history texts that are part of the official curriculum. As Ruth Linn writes, "Israeli Holocaust historiography was to follow the spirit of the court's policy at the Eichmann trial: silencing and removing challenging survivors from the gallery, and muting questions about the role of the Jewish Council in the deportations."

In 1998 Linn arranged for publication of the first Hebrew edition of Vrba's memoirs. In Escaping Auschwitz she establishes the chronology of Vrba's disappearance not only from Auschwitz but also from the Israeli Holocaust narrative, skillfully exposing how the official Israeli historiography of the Holocaust has sought to suppress the story.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Holocaust

176 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2004

Reviews

[sudney · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a really really interesting book, written by an israeli professor who specializes in moral psychology and is interested in holocaust scholarly debate. two jews escaped from auschwitz in 1944 and dispersed information that triggered a domino effect, saving thousands of hungarian jews from deportation to the concentration/death camps. why do the hegemony of israel and the holocaust remembrance community both culturally and officially sideline the opinions, actions, and stories of these men?

she explains the shifting view of the judenrat, the israeli insistence upon maintaining a certain view of holocaust survivors and victims, and the discourse around the vrba-wetzler report (among many other interesting revelations). linn suggests that knowledge, -- selectively spreading it and guarding it, what actions it inspires and does not inspire -- more so than the infrastructure of the nazi occupation, was the most important factor in the holocaust. there's also a distinction between information and knowledge i.e. knowing is not believing. it seems to be the same now.

i like the way she prompts the reader to examine the process of historicization. who can control it and why? what is the criteria by which we judge it as righteous? what does it take to recontextualize events after a consensus has been reached? who knows more - the survivor, or the so-called expert? this definitely leaves me w more questions than answers but i was totally engaged. it inspired me to flip to the footnotes and look up sources like a real authentic non-poser would and now my reading/watchlist has extended significantly. i learned alot from this book not just limited to facts and figures.

[Jenine Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a difficult book to read. It's very scholarly. If it had more reviews, I probably would not have bothered to finish.

Two men escaped Auschwitz and managed to give detailed reports of the camps and what was happening as well as how they could be crippled (the train tracks.)
This book covers their escape and report, and raises the questions of why it was not more widely disseminated, and would it have been of any use if it had? Would anyone believe? Would resisting make matters better? Were the Jewish leaders simply doing the best they could, or is there a culture of apathy?

[Elizabeth D]

interesting and compelling analysis of an unjustly forgotten figure