Here are the five articles—-credited to “Dr. Rudolf Vrba” but ghost-written by journalist Alan Bestic–that kick-started the publication of their jointly-authored book, I Cannot Forgive, in 1963, which led, in turn, to Claude Lanzmann featuring Vrba in his epic documentary, Shoah, in 1985. These “eye-witness” reports about Auschwitz are now viewable, as they appeared in the London-based Daily Herald in 1961. Click on the bolded title for each article [below] or on the image, and they become very easy to read.
1. I WARNED THE WORLD of Eichmann’s Murders Published February 27, 1961
When Adolf Eichmann faces trial in Tel-Aviv in April, there can be no doubt about his guilt. Those six million graves cannot be denied. The question of his sentence, too, will be only of academic interest. Civilization has no yardstick to measure punishment for such a creature. The trial, indeed, will be like an old film we all know off by heart. And Eichmann will be but a fading, flickering figure in the middle, already a fossil of history…
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2. TWO HOUR WAIT FOR DEATH Published February 28, 1961
The day that Himmler and Adolf Eichmann visted us in Auschwitz, the camp has almost a festive air. As the cars approached, the prisoners’ orchestra was playing a famous aria from the Czech opera, The Bartered Bride, “Why Should We Not Be Merry, When God Gives us Health.” As they passed through the sombre gates, the tune changed to “The Triumphal March” from Aida. The heroes drove on to the battlefield where children were being murdered on an industrial scale… It was August, 1942…
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3. ESCAPE AT LAST Published March 1, 1961
Hitler and his master butcher, Adolf Eichmann, had three sound reasons for making Auschwitz the most closely guarded concentration camp in the world. They wanted to keep their victims. And -infinitely more important – they wanted to keep their atrocities from the rest of the world. They knew they would rouse the fury of every civilized man if the secret leaked out. Worse, their monstrosities would be remembered for ever in the history books…
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4. A WOMAN’S CRY Published March 2, 1961
Auschwitz was 40 miles behind me. The Slovak border was 40 miles ahead. I lay on the side of a hill, my face ground into its rocks while German bullets wasped their way around me. It seemed like the end of my journey, the end of my plan to warn a million Hungarian Jews that they were ear-marked for the gas chambers… The end of my aim to tell the civilized world about Eichmann’s secret horror camp. The end of my life. And then there was a miracle…
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5. HE WEPT — And passed my message to the world. Published March 3, 1961
I am a Jew. In spite of that — indeed because of it — I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of Quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr. Kastner, leader of the Council which spoke for all Jews in Hungary. There were similar Councils all over occupied Europe and without their co-operation the Germans could never have carried out their mass massacres. I escaped to Auschwitz to expose this confidence trick and to warn the Hungarian Jewish leaders that Adolph Eichmann planned the liquidation of 1,000,000 of their people…
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Next: THE EARLY YEARS