Holocaust witness, survivor, and humanitarian Rudolf Vrba remains often on my mind these days. I think about his insights having survived inside the most infamous of all Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, between 1942 and 1944. He was able to escape, with fellow Slovakian Jew Alfred Wetzler, in what is one of the most harrowing tales of survival and perseverance ever told, and it’s all true.
My video explains this importance of Rudolf Vrba to today’s understanding of Nazism, fascism, and how authoritarians organize state-sponsored terror.
Vrba published his account of that feat, first in 1963, in the memoir now called I Escaped from Auschwitz. It remains one of the most chilling books on inhumanity and survival ever written. It also details how Vrba and Wetzler successfully informed the world about the Nazis’ then little-known crimes of mass murder, which ultimately saved about 200,000 Hungarian Jewish civilians from being gassed to death with Zyklon B in the infamous Birkenau gas chambers.
Vrba’s wisdom and lifelong quest to inform the world about the Nazis’ crimes against humanity, and hold the perpetrators accountable, lasted the rest of his long life. He died in 2006, at his final peaceful home of Vancouver, BC, where he later became a professor and had retired to a peaceful end he long deserved. Vrba’s many interviews given throughout his life are the stuff of legend. They are riveting because of his vitality and his razor sharp memory, which he uses to bring the horror of fascism and Nazism to full clarity.
He outlines with incredible precision how the Nazis’ system was built on lies and also based on greed to steal everything from their innocent civilian victims. What he left us all is a blueprint how to confront evil and what to do when suddenly we find evil has taken over what we thought was a normal, predictable, sane, and perhaps peaceful world.
I believe this historic moment benefits from knowing what Vrba has to share. We should use his wisdom to inform our own individual and collective action to confront what is happening now, in frightening speed. We need clarity from a witness to unspeakable but fully organized and planned evil to help us understand and respond to an emerging authoritarian regime with leaders who openly embrace fascism in deeds, methods, words, tropes, propaganda, and even fascist-worshiping gestures.
As I describe toward the end of my video explaining the accomplishments and importance of Vrba, I acknowledge most of us in our modern and seemingly rational world will not be able to confront and respond to the moment because it is too overwhelming and frightening.
However, we will all need to do something, and hopefully it will be similar to what Vrba and others did—care for others, show courage, serve a purpose greater than our own needs. We don’t have the luxury of indifference or denial. We’re well past that point, and we cannot turn back to the clock.
It is my hope that you will be good to yourself, and above all confront reality head on. Turning away will only lead to more harm for yourself and for those whom you cherish. Coming together is the way forward.
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