The Escape Artist

The astonishing, forgotten story of the hero who escaped from Auschwitz to reveal the truth of the Holocaust.

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'Awe inspiring, exciting and poignant, this is a thrilling read, a piece of redemptive storytelling and a work of important Holocaust historical research: Freedland has given Rudolf Vrba his rightful place in history - and in the process written a book that I couldn't put down' Simon Sebag Montefiore



'An immediate classic of Holocaust literature. Superbly researched and written, it is both a gripping story and deeply moving, I literally could not put it down' Antony Beevor



In April 1944 a teenager named Rudolf Vrba was planning a daring and unprecedented escape from Auschwitz. After hiding in a pile of timber planks for three days while 3,000 SS men and their bloodhounds searched for him, Vrba and his fellow escapee Fred Wetzler would eventually cross Nazi-occupied Poland on foot, as penniless fugitives. Their mission: to tell the world the truth of the Final Solution.



Vrba would produce from memory a breathtaking report of more than thirty pages revealing the true nature and scale of Auschwitz - a report that would find its way to Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope, eventually saving over 200,000 Jewish lives.



A thrilling history with enormous historical implications, THE ESCAPE ARTIST is the extraordinary story of a complex man who would seek escape again and again: first from Auschwitz, then from his past, even from his own name. In telling his story, Jonathan Freedland - the journalist, broadcaster and acclaimed, multi-million copy selling author of the Sam Bourne novels - ensures that Rudolf Vrba's heroic mission will also escape oblivion.