Ruth Linn is a full professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development at the University of Haifa. Specializing in moral psychology, she has focused on moral disobedience, including resistance to authority
Here, as one on the world’s leading authorities on Vrba’s contributions to Holocaust history, she has provided these comments in response to a bestseller that was clearly based on the information that Vrba first published in 1963
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Ruth Linn
Regarding Jonathan Freedland’s 2022 book, “The Escape Artist,” (2023 in Hebrew) there are film clips which were aired in 2004 on Channel 2 of Israeli national TV, which unintentionally confront Freedland’s claims quite easily. Regarding this aforementioned material:
1- It negates his claim that his 2022 book is a proof that he is the one who found Vrba.
2- It negates his claim that Vrba was not known in Israel before his time.
3- It negates his claim that he is the first one who was exposed to Vrba’s documents and exposed Vrba to the Israelis.
4- It negates his claim that he is the one who inserted Vrba into the Israeli pantheon of heroism.
The 2004 clip presents three Israelis who, helped insert Vrba into the Israeli pantheon of heroism some 20 years BEFORE Freedland:
a- Mr. Yehoshua Ben Ami- a Slovak Holocaust resister who volunteered to translate Vrba’s 1963 memoirs into the Hebrew language . This text was rejected by yad Vashem publishing house,
b- Prof. Ruth Linn, an Israeli academic, who volunteered to arranged for the 1998 publication of Vrba’s memoirs by her university publishing house, and successfully struggled for the 1998 Vrba’s honorary award.
c-Dr. Michal Shaked, who served as a senior attorney in the Ministry of Justice in Jerusalem, where she represented the Israeli Government, mainly in cases before the Supreme Court. She is an expert on the judges at the Eichmann trial . Already in the year 2000 she came out with a pioneering article on Vrba-s place in the Israeli historiography.
Freedland did not write his book as a volunteer. He does not explain how it happened that the institution which banned the publication of Vrba’s book ( see Bauer, 2006) suddenly showed interest in a book that praises his story . Yad Vashem’s various modes of suppression are discussed in Linn’s 2023 article on this site). You can also read more about it here on this site.
You can view the links and the transcript on the following page, Interview Transcripts.
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FURTHER: Here are links to two Ruth Linn articles and one Israeli television program that dispute, correct and clarify some aspects of Jonathan Freedland’s accounts pertaining to Rudolf Vrba:
Linn, R. (2023). Who’s afraid of the man who escaped Auschwitz? Studies in Education (22) 177-196. (ENGLISH)
Linn, R 2004 The Auschwitz Escape: Part A. The Auschwitz Escape Part B. (HEBREW)
Linn, R. (2004). The Escape from Auschwitz: Why didn’t they teach us about it in school? Theory and Criticism, 24, 163-184 (HEBREW)
If you are able to read Hebrew, here is the Ruth Linn 2004 article entitled, The Escape from Auschwitz: Why didn’t they teach us about it in school? Theory and Criticism, 24, 163-184 (Hebrew). It examines her “finding” Vrba 25 years before Freedland, and some of Bauer’s obfuscations..