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April 7, 2006
Hero of Auschwitz dies
Editorial
When Rudolph Vrba passed away last month, a dramatic chapter in
Jewish and world history passed with him. Vrba, a Vancouver resident
and professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia,
was one of just five people to escape the death camp Auschwitz during
the Holocaust.
The testimony provided by Vrba and his co-escapee Alfred Wetzler
was the first eyewitness account the Allies received of the Final
Solution. And, while officials reacted slowly to Vrba's assertion
that an estimated 1.7 million people had already perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau
and that 800,000 Hungarian Jews were set to be deported for liquidation,
it is said that Vrba's escape and testimony may have saved the lives
of as many as 200,000 people.
After escaping, Vrba and Wetzler authored a 30-page document known
as the Auschwitz Protocols, which offered the first irrefutable
truth of the Nazi horrors and could have been but wasn't
used to justify the bombing of Auschwitz or its feeder rail
lines.
It was a remarkable act of salvation for a man who had lived quietly
in Canada since 1967. Vrba's story was well known among survivors
and scholars of the Holocaust. But for many Vancouverites, he was
simply a neighbor, a professor, a friend.
Jewish tradition says, "He who saves one life ... it is as
if he saves an entire universe." Vrba changed the course of
history. May his name be inscribed forever in the annals of the
righteous.
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