75: Vrba–Wetzler Report

Vrba–Wetzler Report

75 years ago today (April 10, 1944) Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped from the Auschwitz Birkenau Death Camp in German occupied Poland. Their main goal was to tell the Allies about the Death Camp and try and save the few remaining European Jews from being sent there (mostly from Hungary.)

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 Nazi-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. It was written by hand in Slovak between April 25-27, 1944, by Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, two Slovak Jews who had escaped from Auschwitz on April 10th, 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 prompted an end to the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz, saving around 200,000 lives (with the aid of Swedish, Swiss, Portuguese and Spanish Diplomats.)

Rudolf Vrba died in 2006 at the age of 81 and Alfred Wetzler died in 1988 at the age of 70.