The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

"In addition to prizes dedicated to the genre, biographies also loomed large on the shortlist of the UK’s most prestigious nonfiction prize, the Baillie Gifford Prize. A particularly gripping read is The Escape Artist by British journalist Jonathan Freedland, who also writes thrillers under the name Sam Bourne . It’s the story of a Slovakian Jewish teenager, Rudolf Vrba, who along with fellow Slovakian Fred Wetzler managed to escape from Auschwitz in April 1944. They were the first Jews to do so and were able to report what was going on there to the outside world. The book opens with their escape by hiding in a pit under a woodpile and taking advantage of their knowledge of SS protocols to get away. Vrba, who was born Walter Rosenberg, subsequently made his life in the US."

"I’ve read many books that tell stories of Auschwitz. It’s very sobering when you think about the number of stories that are still coming out about those times, all these many decades later. They all merit our attention. This book is extraordinary because Rudolf Vrba and a fellow inmate, Alfred Wetzler, were the first Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz. Jonathan Freedland is a fiction writer too—he writes thrillers under the name Sam Bourne —so there is an element of thriller in the way that he describes this escape and the build-up to it. It is incredibly heart-in-your-mouth compelling. But it’s a bigger story than just one man’s breakout. Vrba goes on to try and put the word out about what’s going on in Auschwitz and saves many lives in the process. The book is memorializing one man’s heroism. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . One of the things that’s so terrific about this book is that it charts Rudolf Vrba’s life after the war, in America, where he went on to be a chemist. It’s about how you deal with the rest of your life, after something so extraordinary has happened to you at the age of 19. This is going to sound quite strange, but he’s very often a man who is not particularly likeable. He’s a man you have very mixed feelings about, while you’re also seeing the bigger picture. The ambivalence there is just brilliantly done. It’s a very powerful book and a Jewish friend of mine said she found it very upsetting because it’s a book that makes you think, ‘With fewer and fewer people alive to tell these stories, where, as a Jew, am I safe in the world today?’ It has all these reverberations, at the same time as being a terrific story."