The true purpose of the Auschwitz death camp was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Third Reich. Prisoners who tried to escape were killed in public as a deterrent to other inmates, and very few ever made it out alive. Escape From Auschwitz tells the incredible story of two young Slovak Jews, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who escaped by hiding in a woodpile for three days then fleeing across enemy territory, determined to tell the world about the murders and atrocities being committed by the Nazis at the camp.
Hoping to stop the deportations and put an end to the constant stream of victims being transported to their deaths, Vrba and Wetzler wrote a detailed account of what was taking place in the camp. The report was sent to Allies around the world. But to Vrba’s horror, some took ages to arrive in the right hands, and the most urgent copy was suppressed by the head of the Hungarian Jewish Committee, who worried it would destroy a deal he was trying to make with Adolph Eichmann. Ultimately, the delays cost thousands of lives and caused a controversy that raged long after the Holocaust was over, but in an amazing twist, the released report and an unrelated American bombing raid eventually caused Hungary’s puppet dictator to stop the deportations, saving more than a hundred thousand remaining Hungarian Jews from the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz.
