Rudolf Vrba
| Rudolf Vrba | |
|---|---|
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Vrba in 1946
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| Born |
Walter Rosenberg 11 September 1924 Topoľčany, Czechoslovakia |
| Died | 27 March 2006 (aged 81) Vancouver, Canada |
| Nationality | Slovakian |
| Citizenship | British (1966), Canadian (1972) |
| Education | Dr. Tech. Sc., chemistry and biology, Prague Technical University, 1951 |
| Occupation | Associate professor of pharmacology, University of British Columbia |
| Known for | Vrba–Wetzler report |
| Spouse(s) | Gerta Vrbová (m. 1944), Robin Vrba (m. 1975) |
| Children | Dr. Helena Vrbová, Zuza Vrbová Jackson |
| Parent(s) | Elias Rosenberg, Helena Rosenberg (née Grünfeldova) |
| Awards | Czechoslovak Medal of Bravery (c. 1945) Doctor of Philosophy Honoris Causa, University of Haifa (1998) Order of the White Double Cross, 1st class, Slovakia (2007) |
Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp in German Nazi-occupied Poland on 10 April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote a report containing the most detailed information available at the time about the mass murder taking place inside the camp.
Originally from Slovakia, Vrba and fellow escapee Alfréd Wetzler fled Auschwitz three weeks after German forces invaded Hungary and began deporting its Jewish population to the camp. The 60 pages of information the men dictated to Jewish officials when they arrived in Slovakia on 24 April, which included that arrivals were being gassed and not resettled as expected, became known as the Vrba–Wetzler report. While it confirmed material in earlier reports from Polish and other escapees, historian Miroslav Kárný writes that it was unique in its "unflinching detail."
There was a delay of several weeks before the report was distributed widely enough to gain the attention of governments. Mass transports of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz began on 15 May 1944 at a rate of 12,000 people a day. Most went straight to the gas chambers. Vrba argued until the end of his life that the deportees would have refused to board the trains had they known they were not being resettled. His position is generally not accepted by Holocaust historians.
Throughout June and into July 1944, material from the Vrba–Wetzler and earlier reports appeared in newspapers and radio broadcasts in the United States and Europe, particularly in Switzerland, prompting world leaders to appeal to Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy to halt the deportations. On 7 July 1944 he ordered an end to them, possibly fearing he would be held responsible after the war. By then 437,000 Jews had been deported, constituting almost the entire Jewish population of the Hungarian countryside, but another 200,000 in Budapest were saved.
Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg in Topoľčany, Czechoslovakia. (He took the name Rudolf Vrba in April 1944 after his escape, and changed his name legally after the war.) His parents, Elias Rosenberg and Helena Rosenberg (née Gruenfeldová), the latter from Zbehy, Slovakia, owned a steam sawmill in Jaklovce, near Margecany, Slovakia.
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