Rudolf Vrba was a Slovak Jewish teenager deported to Auschwitz in 1942. Assigned to forced labor, he gradually learned how the camp operated, including the arrival schedules of transport trains and the disappearance of entire groups of prisoners.
Vrba noticed a pattern. When inmates went missing, guards searched intensely for three days. If no trace was found after that period, the search was abandoned. This observation became central to his escape plan.
In April 1944, Vrba and another prisoner, Alfred Wetzler, carried out their plan. They hid in a hollowed out space between woodpiles just outside the inner perimeter of the camp.
Fellow prisoners sprinkled the area with tobacco and gasoline to confuse guard dogs. For three days, Vrba and Wetzler remained completely still, surviving without food or water while search parties combed the camp.
On the fourth day, when the search ended, they emerged and began a dangerous journey on foot through occupied territory.
After eleven days, they reached Slovakia and contacted Jewish resistance leaders. Vrba and Wetzler dictated a detailed report describing the layout of Auschwitz, the gas chambers, crematoria, selection process, and the scale of mass murder.
The document, later known as the Vrba Wetzler Report, was the first comprehensive eyewitness account to clearly explain the industrial nature of the extermination.
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