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The Escape Artist

The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

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The Escape Artist

By: Jonathan Freedland
Narrated by: Jonathan Freedland
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Summary

 The astonishing, forgotten story of the hero who escaped from Auschwitz to reveal the truth of the Holocaust.

In April 1944 a teenager named Rudolf Vrba was planning a daring and unprecedented escape from Auschwitz. After hiding in a pile of timber planks for three days while 3,000 SS men and their bloodhounds searched for him, Vrba and his fellow escapee Fred Wetzler would eventually cross Nazi-occupied Poland on foot, as penniless fugitives. Their mission: to tell the world the truth of the Final Solution.

Vrba would produce from memory a breathtaking report of more than thirty pages revealing the true nature and scale of Auschwitz - a report that would find its way to Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope, eventually saving over 200,000 Jewish lives.

A thrilling history with enormous historical implications, THE ESCAPE ARTIST is the extraordinary story of a complex man who would seek escape again and again: first from Auschwitz, then from his past, even from his own name. In telling his story, Jonathan Freedland - the journalist, broadcaster and acclaimed, multi-million copy selling author of the Sam Bourne novels - ensures that Rudolf Vrba's heroic mission will also escape oblivion.

(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited©2022 Jonathan Freedland 20th Century Military Modern Scary Thought-Provoking War Holocaust
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Critic reviews

Excellent . . . thrilling . . . Freedland's book is rich in the kind of details that haunt you long after you have turned the last page (Sunday Times)

A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information - and misinformation (Yuval Noah Harari)

A magnificent book. I could scarcely breathe at some points. What a tribute to its extraordinary hero, and it's such an important and necessary story to read . . . I can't praise it too highly. What an achievement (Philip Pullman)

An immediate classic of Holocaust literature. Superbly researched and written, it is both a gripping story and deeply moving, I literally could not put it down (Antony Beevor)

Immersive, shattering, and, ultimately redemptive . . . An epic of terror and endurance . . . Written with Freedland's page-turning, gripping, hard-edged immediacy, The Escape Artist is profound in thought, boundless in humanity, an immediate modern classic (Simon Schama)

Awe-inspiring, exciting and poignant, this is a thrilling read, a piece of redemptive storytelling and a work of important Holocaust historical research: Freedland has given Rudolf Vrba his rightful place in history - and in the process written a book that I couldn't put down (Simon Sebag Montefiore)

The Escape Artist is marvellous. It is original, meticulous and utterly compelling - and ultimately a deeply tragic tale (Philippe Sands)

A must-read stand-out piece of history . . . This is Freedland at his finest . . . It is both a celebration of the extraordinary will, courage and resilience of the hero - Rudi Vrba - and an all too prescient warning of how hard it is to wake up the world to things it would prefer not to see (Emily Maitlis)

A work of the highest quality about an astonishing man. It is gripping from start to finish, searingly, shocking, revelatory and deeply moving - the more so because there is no false note, no striving for effect. The research is prodigious and the complexities deftly woven into the narrative . . . A profoundly troubling and important work (Jonathan Dimbleby)

A masterpiece of page-turning history: an escape story that is also a fearless exploration of some of the most profound questions that face humanity. Rudolf Vrba's extraordinary testimony will deepen your understanding of the Holocaust - and compel you to think afresh about our own times, and the role of truth, denial and fragile memory. Magisterial (Matthew d'Ancona)

The story of Vrba's escape from Auschwitz, exquisitely told by Jonathan Freedland, soars like a thriller. Exhilarating, deeply moving and historically important (Simon Parkin)

Powerful, important, compelling and superbly told. This is a book that needs to be read (Bart van Es, bestselling author of The Cut Out Girl)

An indispensable, unflinching, bone-hard book. Compelling reading (Howard Jacobson)
All stars
Most relevant
The story told should be heard by everyone. And the way Jonny Freedland crafted this story of stories is remarkable. Thanks.

Incredible

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This is one of those life stories which, even when you try to describe it to someone else, cannot be believed or grasped until the individual has read and experienced it for themselves. (And believe me, I've tried.) Ironically, that's one of the themes that appears over and over again throughout the book. Don't be put off by thinking this is just a daring-do escape story; the escape itself actually forms only about a fifth of the book.

It is clearly Freedland's opus and I find it hard to imagine how it could have been better researched. His prose manages to be both detailed and sparce at the same time, but with a poetry that lifts the facts with an emotion appropriate to their social and historical context. One can see that his description of Robyn, for instance, was painstakingly crafted. I suspect it's one of those books that is even better hearing via narration.

Recommended for anyone, but especially those interested in courage, perseverance, standing up for injustice but also Christians thinking about evangelism. Hopefully it won't be long before it's on the reading list of secondary schools as a follow on from Anne Frank. Congratulations to Mr Freedland on an excellent book and I'm looking forward to seeing what else he produces.

One of those books everyone should read

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Very difficult to understand why how this happened, how could humans do this, disturbing.

History that should not be forgotten!

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A stunning book of a life lived to the full he had is flaws but don’t we all

A stunning book

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Achingly sad and yet very engaging. A fascinating story which has been very well written and read.

Riveting

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