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May 11, 2007
Shoah "resister" is honored
Vancouver's Prof. Rudolf Vrba saved as many as 150,000 lives.
PAT JOHNSON
The late Vancouver scientist Rudolf Vrba, who saved as many as
150,000 lives during the Holocaust, was remembered recently as a
great, humble hero. Several dozen friends, family and admirers came
together April 26, almost a year since Vrba's passing, at the Vancouver
Holocaust Education Centre to eulogize the Auschwitz escapee who
first brought the incontrovertible truth about the Final Solution
to the world.
Vrba, one of only five Jews to escape Auschwitz and survive, co-authored
the Vrba-Wetzler Report which, at the time it was released in 1944,
was known as the Auschwitz Protocol to protect the authors' identities
from Nazi retribution. In remarkable detail, Vrba and his fellow
escapee confirmed the atrocities Allied forces had suspected were
occurring.
Vrba's work at Auschwitz gave him comparative freedom and he was
able to learn much about the functioning of the death camp, which
he used to provide detailed, illustrated information after his escape.
The report was provided to the British and American governments,
the International Red Cross and the Vatican.
By 1944, Allied leaders were aware that the Birkenau facility adjacent
to Auschwitz was serving as a mass murder factory, and Vrba's report
confirmed this in horrific detail. What the Allies did with this
information has remained a source of conflict among historians and
ethicists, some of whom believe more could have been done to prevent
the successful deportation of hundreds of thousands of European
Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
Vrba's escape and the report he created were motivated by his realization
that deportations were about to begin in earnest from Hungary, which
by 1944 was home to the last relatively intact Jewish community.
In response, the Allies placed pressure on the Nazi puppet regime
in Hungary to delay or reduce the transports but, in the end, hundreds
of thousands of Hungarian Jews were killed. Even so, it is estimated
that Vrba's actions may have saved as many as 150,000 lives –
an astounding figure in the midst of panoramic murder and inhumanity.
Last month, Vrba's astounding legacy was remembered in the city
he adopted as his home. The occasion was used to announce a major
new community lecture series. The Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lectureship
will alternate annually between leading researchers in the fields
of Holocaust history and Vrba's field, pharmacology, and associated
disciplines.
Dr. Robert Krell, a founding president of the Vancouver Holocaust
Education Centre, was one of those deeply influenced by Vrba, who
was remembered as charmingly abrasive.
"Most of us present have been touched, influenced, educated
and inspired by him," said Krell. "He made me a smarter
and tougher person."
Prof. Chris Friedrichs, a University of British Columbia historian,
recalled Vrba's "towering, uncompromising intellectual honesty.
Rudolf Vrba wanted to be thought of as a scientist," said Friedrichs,
"not as a professional survivor of the Holocaust."
In fact, added Ruth Linn, an Israeli author who has done much to
spread the little-known story of Vrba's heroism, Vrba took exception
to the term Holocaust survivor.
"Never call me a Holocaust survivor," Linn recalled Vrba
telling her. "I'm a Holocaust resister."
Vrba had been involved in the underground while in the camps –
Vrba in fact was the nom de guerre of the man who was born Walter
Rosenberg in Slovakia – and his relatively privileged jobs
in the camps gave him insight into the workings of the camp, including
what he correctly guessed were preparations to send the Jews of
Hungary to the peril of Auschwitz.
Linn has been a leading figure in the resuscitation of Vrba's Holocaust
history, which was almost unknown until recently. Linn herself,
dean of education at the University of Haifa, was dumbfounded to
discover Vrba's story as an almost throw-away line in Claude Lanzmann's
landmark 1985 documentary Shoah. It became a consuming passion for
Linn to discover more, an avocation that led to the publication
of her book Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting.
Prof. John Conway, who introduced Linn at the event, heralded the
book as a "splendid work of rectification."
In Escaping Auschwitz, Linn speculates that the lack of awareness
may not have been unintentional. There is evidence that a plan to
save some Hungarian Jews was underway between community leaders
in Hungary and the Nazis – a deal with the devil the Jewish
leadership did not want to derail. The report never reached the
mass of Hungarian Jews and, when a half million were ordered to
report to the train stations, a month after Vrba's escape, almost
all of them were still deluded by the fantasy that they were being
resettled to the east.
Due almost single-handedly to Linn, Vrba's story is now more widely
known in Israel. At her urging, Vrba's 1963 memoir Escape From
Auschwitz: I Cannot Forgive was finally translated into Hebrew
and Vrba was granted an honorary degree from the University of Haifa.
"His legacy must be taught worldwide and forever," said
Geoffrey Druker, who organized the event.
Frieda Miller, the executive director of the Vancouver Holocaust
Education Centre, said she hoped that, in addition to the lecture
series, a permanent exhibit in the centre would commemorate Vrba's
legacy in his home town.
Pat Johnson is, among other things, director of development
and communications for the Vancouver Hillel Foundation.
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