Auschwitz escapee, 82, dies in Canada

[Lithos]

Rudolf Vrba, one of five Jews who escaped the Auschwitz death camp during World War II, died Monday in Vancouver, Canada at age 82, Toronto's Globe and Mail reported Friday.

...

In spring 1944, Vrba and Wetzler provided the Allies with a description of the Nazi killing machine that later became known as the Auschwitz Protocols.

Twenty years after the end of the war, Vrba emigrated to Canada. He became a professor and later professor emeritus of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia.

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Please discuss according to the I/P guidelines.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Violet_Crumble]

3. Why did you post this in the I/P forum?

There's no link to an article, and it's got to do with WWII and not the I/P conflict...

Yr attempt to equate Hamas and the Nazis is incorrect. Anyone who thinks that they're similar is either woefully uninformed on the Nazis and their ideology or has taken the easy way out by pretending that Hamas can be snugly put in a box with the Nazis...

Violet...

[Tom Joad]

5. This is at variance with forum rules.

"Do not compare Middle East regional leaders and parties to Hitler or the Nazis. Use of these terms is considered inflammatory and should be avoided."

That is a good rule. Rules don't get enforced sometimes, especially on the weekends.

Still.....

Long live the resisters at Auschwitz, in the Warsaw ghetto, and all opponents of oppression!

NEVER AGAIN, is for everybody. No injustice, no oppression, should be ignored. All people are entitled to human rights, and we must be respectful of all.

Don't say you didn't know!!
http://www.machsomwatch.org/eng/aboutUsEng.asp?link=aboutUsEng〈=eng

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3222922,00.html

[IndianaGreen]

6. Hamas is a terrorist group. Not one Democrat thinks of Hamas as anything

other than a terrorist group: Not Dean, not Kerry, not Hillary, not Feingold, not a single one. All of them demand that Hamas renounces violence and their vow to destroy Israel. Hamas has yet to make a move in that direction!

[Violet_Crumble]

7. You still shouldn't compare them to Nazis...

Which is what Tom was trying to point out to you...

Violet...

[mike_c]

8. Hamas is much more than "a terrorist group...."

Hamas is as much a social movement as anything else. Dismissing them as a "terrorist group" is way too simplistic.

[IndianaGreen]

9. The Khmer Rouge was also a social movement

I cannot understand why some of my distinguished colleagues in DU, people with which I share a commonality of views rather than disagreements, let their justifiable passion for freedom and justice for Palestinians blind them to the nature of the beast now in charge of the Palestinian Authority.

We wouldn't accept the imposition of Sharia law on Iraqi women and girls, yet we are asked to remain silent if Hamas imposes Sharia on Palestinian women and girls. Isn't that a distorted view of freedom?

[mike_c]

10. point taken...

...not all social movements are benign, and I am not in a position to judge Hamas or even the Khmer Rouge, ultimately. I do see your point, however. Still, it's disingenuous to dismiss Hamas as simply "a terrorist organization." Frankly, I'm not comfortable with describing acts of violence against Israelis as simply "terrorism" without examining the context for those acts (and I'm equally reluctant to trivialize Israeli violence against Palestinians-- there are reasons for this struggle and they need to be understood rather than simply used as the basis for pronouncements). And what of the Palestinians murdered or simply dispossessed since 1944? Is Hamas worse than Irgun, and the Likud it spawned? Were you so quick to denounce the Likud as "a terrorist organization?" What about the settlement movement? The IDF occupation forces?

edit-- remember too that the Palestinians elected Hamas to power at least partly in response to Israeli provocation.

[Phx_Dem]

12. terrorism?

"Frankly, I'm not comfortable with describing acts of violence against Israelis as simply "terrorism" without examining the context for those acts...."

So you support suicide bombers because of "context"? What context? Maybe they have PTSD? I don't get it Mike.

[mike_c]

14. it's hard to decide whether this is a straw man or...

...a simple ad hominum attack, or maybe both. :shrug:

First, I did not say I "support suicide bombers" although I will say now that I do not necessarily condemn them without knowing anything more than that they were "suicide bombers."

Second, I support the struggle of Palestinians against a violent, brutal occupation by an apartheid regime. Given the treatment the Israelis have subjected Palestinians to for 50 years, I doubt that an entirely nonviolent resistance is a reasonable expectation, no matter how desirable that might be in principle. If meeting violence with violence is a reasonable response, e.g. the sort of way you and I might respond to murder, land theft, and foreign occupation, then the question becomes by what means? The Palestinians have no military means to confront the IDF (or the Haganah before them, or the Irgun, etc)-- they were under British rule and protection when the Zionists began killing them and have essentially been refugees within their own country ever since, subject to oppression and retribution by one occupying force or another. So they manufacture homemade rockets, which almost never hit anything, and for which Israel shoots missiles from helicopter gunships into crowds of innocent bystanders, and they strap explosives onto their bodies and die trying to strike back against their oppressors. One man's terrorism is usually another's stuggle for freedom, one way or another. Simply condemning them as "terrorists" is blind over-simplification, and will never lead to peace. Peace comes only through justice, and justice requires understanding of the true nature of events, not blanket, reflexive condemnation.

[Phx_Dem]

15. thanks for the clarification

That's all I was looking for, I did not intend to make a personal attack. I do disagree with you about how you or I might respond though, it seems like a very fine line between terrorism vs. freedom fighter.

[mike_c]

16. no offense taken-- that's what DU is for....

And welcome to DU, BTW.

Shalom.

[barb162]

26. point well-stated, Indiana

:hi:

Beside the horrible sharia aspects affecting and being imposed on women, I have my doubts about just the general nature of secular society and thought being lost under a theocracy such as Hamas.

[Violet_Crumble]

4. The US knew what was going on...

Walter Lacquer talks about Verba and Wetzler in 'Hitler's Holocaust: Who Knew What, When and How?' (from Michael Marrus (ed)'The Nazi Holocaust, Historical articles on the destruction of European Jews, 1989, pp60-79):

"Two inmates of Auschwitz, Vrba and Wetzler, had succeeded in escaping to Slovakia and wrote a long and detailed report about their experiences which later became famous and was widely circulated by the US War Refugee Board. The report contained many new details but all the essential facts had, of course, been known for a long time. The report was taken by a courier to Budapest and from there to Switzerland. Garrett (the representative of the British news agency, Exchange Telegraph) received a copy which he took to Allen Dulles on 22 June 1944. Dulles read it in his presence: "He was profoundly shocked. He was as disconcerted as I was and said: "One has to do something immediately..."

A cable was sent by Dulles to the Secretary of State the following day. Eighteen months earlier the New York Times and other American newspapers had repeatedly featured news items such as TWO THIRDS OF JEWS IN POLAND HELD SLAIN - ONLY 1,250,000 SAID TO SURVIVE OF 3,500,000 ONCE THERE.

Even if it is assumed that not a single additional Jew had been slain since December 1942, it is impossible to understand Allen Dulles's surprise and shock."

Violet...

[IndianaGreen]

11. Haaretz link

23:19 Rudolph Verba, first to escape and tell of Auschwitz horror, dies at 82 (Itim)

http://www.haaretzdaily.com /

[IndianaGreen]

13. Auschwitz escapee, 82, dies in Canada (Jerusalem Post)

Apr. 1, 2006 11:37 | Updated Apr. 1, 2006 15:17

Auschwitz escapee, 82, dies in Canada

By JPOST.COM STAFF

Rudolf Vrba, one of five Jews who escaped the Auschwitz death camp during World War II, died Monday in Vancouver, Canada at age 82, Toronto's Globe and Mail reported Friday.

Vrba was born in Slovakia and was sent to the Majdanker extermination camp when he was 18. He was later transferred to Auschwitz and assigned the job of removing from freight trains the bodies of Jews who had not survived the journey. From Auschwitz, Vrba was transferred again to Birkenau, where he befriended Alfred Wetzler, a Hungarian Jewish leader.

Wetzler and Vrba faced being tortured to death if they were caught in an attempt to escape; nevertheless, the two confounded guards by hiding for three days in a space inside a pile of lumber near Birkenau's perimeter fence. In order to keep the camp dogs away, Vrba and Wetzler used a mixture of tobacco and gasoline to disguise their scent.

<snip>

In spring 1944, Vrba and Wetzler provided the Allies with a description of the Nazi killing machine that later became known as the Auschwitz Protocols.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1143498779063&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

[IndianaGreen]

17. Two Jewish Prisoners Deliver "Auschwitz Protocols"

Two Jewish Prisoners Deliver "Auschwitz Protocols"

Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, two Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz, escaped from the camp on April 7 and provided detailed reports on the murder practiced there. The two escapees spent two days hiding in a pile of logs outside the inner perimeter of the camp. Members of the Auschwitz resistance misled the Nazis’ search dogs by dipping pungent Russian tobacco in gasoline whose scent led the dogs in the wrong direction. Two weeks later, the escapees reached Slovakia and met with Adre Steiner, a representative of the Underground Working Group. On the basis of this meeting, Oscar Krasnansky wrote a 30-page report, the "Auschwitz Protocols." The protocols described in detail the murderous actions being committed at the camp, the number of Jews who had been murdered there, and preparations that were being made there for the murder of some 800,000 Hungarian Jews. On May 16, the gist of the report was forwarded to the West after several previous attempts had failed. After its contents were disseminated, the world understood clearly that Auschwitz was, in fact, an extermination camp.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/chronology/1942-1945/1944/chronology_1944_5.html

The Weczler-Vrba Report

"On April 7, 1944, two Slovakian Jews, twenty-six-year-old Alfred Weczler and twenty-year-old Rudolf Vrba, escaped from Auschwitz. They provided the first eyewitness account of the concentration and extermination camp to the western world, an account that set off the chain of events that led to the Nuremberg trial. ...

Escape from Auschwitz was made difficult not only by the physical barriers, but by the negative attitude of the general camp population, which suffered after every escape. If an escapee somehow made his way beyond the two electrified barbed-wire fences and watchtowers, blaring sirens alerted the whole countryside. Dogs were put into pursuit, and SS and military personnel began to comb the fields and woods. With his shorn head and prison uniform, an inmate could expect no help from the local populace, for assisting an escapee meant death.

Weczler and Vrba had, however, learned from the failures of others and been able to secrete civilian clothing, money, and food. On April 7, 1944, they slipped through the cordon at Birkenau, and within a week they were in Bratislava, Slovakia.

When, at first, they told their tale to members of the Jewish community remaining in that city, they were greeted with incredulity.

When Hitler dismantled Czechoslovakia in 1939, he had left the Slovaks nominally in charge of their own internal affairs, dependent on good behavior. The Slovaks had copied most of the German anti-Semitic laws, expropriated Jewish businesses, removed the Jews from government and the professions, and left them with little opportunity to earn a living. By the spring of 1942 most of the eighty thousand Jews were unemployed and compressed into a few blocks in two cities, Sered and Novaky.

http://www.remember.org/wit.res.esc.html

[MrPrax]

18. How come Vrba died in Canada?

and not Israel? hmmm.....

[Behind the Aegis]

19. He died in Canada because that is where he chose to live.

All Jews should live in Israel? hmmmm...

[MrPrax]

20. LOL..

oh come on...you know why ;-)

[Behind the Aegis]

21. Did you know him? I didn't.

So....

[Dominus]

22. He was a professor at the University of British Columbia

My alma mater.

[MrPrax]

23. I live here...

I met him and heard him speak a few times...he's a good guy. (a bit of a 'thorn in the side'--pardon the pun--for some folks in the community ;-)

[barb162]

24. How was he a thorn in the side?

And did he speak on WW2 issues, Nazis, the camps, etc or ? I'd like to know what you remember about his speeeches, at least the topics. Thanks in advance.

[Dominus]

28. How so?

How was he a thorn in the side for some folks in the community?

What community are you talking about?

[barb162]

25. How was this man able to actually get an education and lead

an extremely productive life after he saw what he saw at such a young age? How was he able to concentrate on pharmacology and then become a professor? The psychological makeup and strength of this man had to be nothing short of miraculous...something on a wondrous level.

[barb162]

27. more on this amazing man

http://www.pharmacology.ubc.ca/vrba/VrbaCV.html

[IndianaGreen]

30. "In March 1942 he was arrested for being Jewish..."

In March 1942 he was arrested for being Jewish, and on June 14th, 1942, he was deported first to Maidanek and from there he was then transferred to Auschwitz on June 30, 1942. He remained Auschwitz prisoner no.44070 for almost two years. He escaped from the Auschwitz death camp (together with Alfred Wetzler) on April 7th, 1944 and under his "nom de guerre" as Rudolf Vrba he co-authored (with A. Wetzler) the Report on Auschwitz death camps on April 25th, 1944 in Zilina, Slovakia. This report became known in the historiography of the Holocaust as the "Vrba-Wetzler Report" or "Auschwitz Protocols", and contains a precise description of: 1-the geography of the Auschwitz annihilation camp; 2-the methodology of the mass murder in gas chambers practiced in Auschwitz already for two years; 3-a history of events that took place in Auschwitz since April 1942. The Vrba-Wetzler Report reached the Governments of the Allies in June 1944.

http://www.pharmacology.ubc.ca/vrba/VrbaCV.html

Thank you for the link, barb162. The Allies had pictures of Auschwitz showing the gas chamber, the crematoria, and the prisoners in formation. American bombers used Auschwitz as a landmark to guide them in their bombing runs. Although American bombers flew often over Auschwitz, they never bombed the gas chamber or the crematoria.

[barb162]

29. Thank you very much for posting this n/t