Vrba-Wetzler report

Vrba–Wetzler report

Sketch from the report – on the left, Auschwitz I showing the DAW, Siemens and Krupp factories; on the right, Auschwitz II showing four gas chambers and crematoria.
Location	Composed in Žilina, Slovakia, 25 April 1944
Also known as	, Auschwitz Report, Auschwitz notebook
Participants	Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler
Outcome	The report's publication caused world leaders to appeal for an end to the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz. It ended on 9 July 1944, saving around 200,000 lives.
Website	Vrba-Wetzler Memorial Full text of the report

The Vrba–Wetzler report, also known as the Auschwitz Protocols, the Auschwitz Report, and the Auschwitz notebook, is a 40-page document about the Auschwitz concentration camp in German Nazi occupied Poland during the Holocaust. It was written by hand or dictated in Slovak between 25 and 27 April 1944 by Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, two Slovak Jews who had escaped from Auschwitz on 10 April, then typed up by Oscar Krasniansky of the Slovak Jewish Council, who simultaneously translated it into German.

The report represents one of the first attempts to estimate the numbers being killed in the camp, and one of the earliest and most detailed description of the gas chambers. The first full English-language publication of the report was in November 1944 by the United States War Refugee Board. The original is kept in the War Refugee Board archives of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in New York.

The report is often referred to as the Auschwitz Protocols, although in fact the Protocols incorporated information from three reports, including the Vrba–Wetzler report.

The text of the report, under the title "German Extermination Camps—Auschwitz and Birkenau," was first published in full in English on 25 November 1944 by the Executive Office of the United States War Refugee Board. The document combined the material from Vrba and Wetzler with two other reports, which came to be known jointly as the Auschwitz Protocols. They were submitted together in evidence at the Nuremberg Trials as document number 022-L.

The Protocols included the seven-page report from Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz, who escaped from Auschwitz on 27 May 1944, and an earlier report, known as the "Polish Major's report," written by Jerzy Tabeau, who escaped on 19 November 1943 and compiled his report between December 1943 and January 1944. This was presented in the Protocols as the 19-page "Transport (The Polish Major's Report)". The full text of the English translation of the Protocols is in the archives of the War Refugee Board at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in New York.