While he was in England, Rudolf Vrba later recalled:
Rudi after joining partisans
“The Resistance Movement in Czechoslovakia was supported mainly by the Russians. I joined a Czechoslovak insurrection unit which was, at that time, responsible to the Czechoslovakian Government in exile, in London. This was shortly after the 29th August 1944, on which date a proclamation had been issued by the hitherto quisling Slovak Army which changed its allegiance. It proclaimed allegiance to the Czechoslovak Government and I joined up as a volunteer, immediately. It was commanded by Sgt. Milan Uher and I duly swore the oath of allegiance to the London Government and to fight until victory over the Germans or until death.
“I joined under the name of Rudolf Vrba which had been given to me together with forged papers by the Jewish Authorities four months previously, i.e. immediately after my escape. This name had been chosen because it was a common name of non-Jewish origin. These were the only documents I had to present to the Army Authorities, but, of course, it was well-known that they were forged.
“The headquarters of the Army were soon in difficulties and were surrounded by German motorised divisions. We were ordered to stay behind the German lines to disrupt communications and harass the Germans by all possible means. We were quickly isolated and command of our unit was taken over by partisan headquarters in Kiev, (Russia); a new Commander, Col. Debrov of the Russian Army was parachuted to us. He was killed in action soon afterwards and Uher (by then a Captain) resumed command of the unit.
“Capt. Uher was killed in action on 28th February 1945. Lt. Krazicky then took over command of the unit and his Chief of’ Staff Placak is the signatory of my discharge papers.
“When the Russian forces arrived on 7th April 1945, we were still actively fighting, but severely depleted. At the request of the Russians, we undertook one final military action and then were retired to a military hospital to recuperate before being returned to the front. By that time, I had actively participated in ten battles against S.S. units in several raids on German artillery posts, in the destruction of railway bridges and supplies etc.
“I was awarded the Czechoslovak Medal for Bravery, the Order of’ the Slovak National Insurrection (II Class), and the medal of Honour for Czechoslovak Partisans. Capt. Uher was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Nation and the Order of the Slovak National Insurrection (I Class). The bodies of all Members of our unit who had been killed were, after the war, exhumed on orders of’ the Government and reburied together in a special monument built at the birthplace of Capt. Uher, at Lubina, in Western Slovakia.
“Whilst we were still in hospital, the war ended. Almost immediately after the end of the war, a military commission composed partly of Russian officers and partly of Czechoslovakian officers (who nevertheless came from Russia) suggested that henceforth the unit be renamed “The Second Stalin Partisan Brigade.” We were all awarded membership of the Communist Party and everyone signed the collective sheet which took the place of a normal application. I requested a discharge from the Army immediately, as I wished to study chemistry at the university. I ·was discharged as “Rudolf Vrba (W. Rosenberg)” and I left for Bratislava in May 1945, to commence my studies.
“When I left the Army, I applied to legalize my new, name Rudolf Vrba. For this, special permission of the Minister of Interior was needed and valid reasons had to be given. The reasons were that after my experiences of the Germans, I did not wish to have a German sounding name and this new name was the one under which I had fought actively against the Nazis. My request was granted in August 1945 in sufficient time for me to qualify for university in my new name.
“I had to pass my university entrance examination and, accordingly, went to a special school for ex-servicemen to take an intensive preparation course. I was there from May to October 1945, when l passed the university entrance examination, I enrolled on 20th October into the Department of Chemical Technology at the Czech. Technical University in Prague.”
A rare photo of Ladislaw Wister at the head of a group of partisans
SAVED BY RUDI
This statue above, near a train station at Banská Bystrica in Slovakia, honours partisans such as Walter Rosenberg who adopted the nom-de-guerre Rudolf Vrba and fought against the Nazi occupying forces during the Slovak National Uprising. Along with a medical doctor and tent-mate named Dr. Ladislav [Laco] Minarik, Vrba served as a machine gunner under Captain Miloš Uher, a national hero born on July 27, 1914 in Lubina.
In his memoir, Rudolf Vrba describes how his meeting with Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel—at the Rabbi’s clandestine Jewish school in Bratislava where zealous young men were studying the Talmud—led to a decision to join the active resistance with the local partisans.
When Weissmandel allowed himself to switch from Hebrew to Slovak—a rarity for this holy man—he addressed Vrba as “the Ambassador of 1,760,000,” thereby alerting Vrba to the fact that he had read and digested the contents of the Vrba-Wetzler Report. It was Weissmandel who confirmed to Vrba that trains transporting Jews to Auschwitz were continuing to leave Budapest on a daily basis.
“Can’t something be done?” Vrba pleaded.
“I will do everything in my power,” the Rabbi replied. “If I had two guns, I would shoot with both hands.”
On his train ride back to his hideout in Liptovsky Svaty Mikulas, Vrba evidently felt emboldened by Weissmandel’s admission that active resistance was both moral and necessary. Long after, he liked to recalled a conversation that occurred when he contacted the Slovak underground, dominated by Communists, and requested a pistol to defend himself if he was ever captured. “We don’t issue pistols to lads like you,” he was told. “We issue machine gunners.”
Approximately, three months later, in August, Vrba went to a village in Western Slovakia, near Nove Mesto, near where Laco Fischer lived, and reported to Sergeant [later Captain] Milan Uher, soon to be revered as the Hero of the Insurrection.
Like Vrba, Captain Miloš Uher had first tried to escape through Hungary to Yugoslavia. After being arrested and imprisoned in Budapest, Uher made it back to Slovakia where he worked at Micher in Stará Turá and in Tauš’s factory in Myjava. In preparation for the declaration of the Slovak National Uprising on August 29, 1944, Uher organized and armed his own partisan detachment named Hurban, in Lubina, and became its commander.
Soon after, Uher co-founded a Soviet-Czechoslovak partisan group with Vladimir Medvedev, leader of J.V. Stalin’s 2nd Czechoslovak Partisan Brigade in Western Slovakia, on September 1, 1944. Uher was killed on February 27, 1945 in Cetuna, just north of Stará Turá, along with at least 14 other partisans, when they were attacked by Abwehrgruppe 218-Edelweiss and POHG.
Reputedly, 100 “fascists” were killed after a day’s fighting, then Uher was shot from behind during an ambush, in a barn near a pub called U Gašparýkov in Cetuna, by a traitor within their own ranks.
Named a captain in memoriam, Miloš Uher was posthumously awarded the Order of the Slovak National Uprising I class (1945), the Order of the Red Star (1969) and the Štefánik Order of the 4th degree on May 8, 1992. He was buried with his comrades on Roh Hill, near his birthplace, now the site of major war memorial [below]. Streets are named in his honour in Slovakia, as well as a student housing complex in Trnava.
This memorial for the Slovak National Uprising on Roh Hill, above Lubina, was created by architect Ján Svetlík and globally-recognized sculptor Rudolf Uher (1913-1987), Miloš older brother. They grew up on the Slovak-Moravian border, in the Podjavrina region, surrounded by the White Carpathanian mountains. Lubin is east of Stará Turá, slightly more than an hour’s drive north of Bratislava.
Map of the Slovak National Uprising in its first days. Credit: Martin Lacko: Slovenské nárdoné povstanie 1944 [The Slovak National Uprising 1944]. Slovart: Bratislava 2008
Slovak National Uprising. Source: SNP Museum (Facebook / colourized)
“Two blocs formed the illegal resistance: the Civic Bloc and the Communist Bloc,” according to the American researcher Vanda Raican, Ph.D, [Northwestern University].
“The Civic Bloc was composed of supporters of banned parties and associations, including Jozef Lettrich, Ján Ursíni, and Matej Joško, who tended to favor the restoration of a democratic Czechoslovakia. They had some connections with former Czechoslovak government officials, who were in exile in London, and cooperated with some illegal groups in the Protectorate.
The Communist Bloc, represented by Gustáv Husák, Ladislav Novomeský, and Karol Šmidke, on the other hand, advocated for a pan-Slovak organization and a very strong connection with Moscow after the war. They did not recognize prewar Czechoslovakia and had no intention of reunification.”
Therefore, the force with which Rudolf Vrba served was unusual. Its Russian leader Medvedev and its Slovakian leader Uher represented both the “Communist Bloc” and the “Civic Bloc” within a tandem unit.
“I was running forward, not backward.”
After only 24 hours of training, Vrba joined an attack force of 120 partisans who were to be guided by Uher to make a nighttime attack on some 700 SS men temporarily lodged inside a schoolhouse at a town called Stará Turá.
The following night the partisans stealthily surrounded the sleeping Nazi forces that had been sent to Slovakia to quash all local resistance. “Silently, foot by foot, we edged towards it. Then Sargeant Uher shouted, and we hurled ourselves at its walls and windows. A flash of fire came from a doorway. A dozen flashes answered it. Two men fell beside me, but I scarcely noticed them. I was running now, and tears of happiness were coursing down my cheeks. I was running forward, not backward.”
It was a bloody rout. The seeming invincible Nazis died and screamed just like the ordinary victims at Auschwitz. After the partisans withdrew from Stará Turá and the so-called Slovak National Uprising had commenced, Vrba recalled the words of his Russian escape mentor, Captain Dmitri Volkov: “Don’t be afraid of the Germans. There are many of them but each of them is small. Here in Auschwitz they try to break your mind and body. They try to convince you that they’re supermen, invincible. But I know they can die just as quickly as anybody else because I’ve killed enough of them in my day.”
RUDI AS A PARTISAN
With two medals (at right), Vrba, cigarette in hand, is celebrated as partisan war hero in Prague.
ALAN TWIGG: We need to talk about Rudi with the partisans. It’s the part [of his story] the world knows nothing about. What can you tell me?
ROBIN VRBA: Well, I can tell you that most of the partisans thought the Jews were wimps. Most of them were anti-semites. So, Rudi had to prove himself. He was on guard duty and one of the Slovak soldiers was taunting him, he was saying Rudi couldn’t be a good guard, things like that. At first, Rudi wasn’t going to do anything. Then Rudi turned on him and almost killed the guy. The guy backed off. After that, he didn’t have any problems anymore. The Slovaks respected him. They figured he wasn’t a normal Jew. Everyone knew Rudi wasn’t a wimp. Word went around that he was a killer.
A: And he executed someone…
R: He did. They had caught this German soldier and he knew he had to be executed. That’s just how it was. In that situation, if it had been reversed, Rudi would have been executed.
A: So, somebody [in the partisans] had to execute this German soldier. There was no Red Cross in the Slovakian countryside…
R: That’s how the partisans worked. They both knew. Rudi had won the battle. The German soldier said, “I know you have to execute me, but could you please send my dog tags back to my family?” Rudi said yes, okay. He granted this guy’s dying wish.
There were two Russian guys with shovels. I guess they must have written down the guy’s address or something. Rudi shot the guy and they buried him. Of course, Rudi didn’t send back the dog tags. That was impossible. He just tossed them into the grave.
A: No local post office handy…
R: Exactly. Considering what the Germans were doing to the Jews, and what Rudi had gone through [in Auschwitz], I thought that was a compassionate way to handle it. The fact that he said yes and didn’t just come back with something really nasty to the guy. When he told me that story, I thought it was a story of compassion. You might read it differently.
A: I’m picturing them in the mountains and the bushes, just travelling around, mostly hiding.
R: I’ve been in the area. Twice. That’s where they were mostly fighting. It’s mostly rolling hills and forest and farmland. They call it Katowice [northeast of Bratislava]. They used to have an annual parade there, going up to a place called Hippopotamus Hill.
A: The main memorial? [for the partisans]
R: Yes, they have two big statues up there, with all the names of people who were killed during the Partisan period, and there are large stones surrounding it with the names of all the towns they were fighting in. Mainly they have commemorations for the Stalin Brigade but one of those stones has a plaque of Rudi and Wetzler. It was put on after Rudi died. That time they invited me and Zuza. Freddy Wetzler’s wife was there, too. Eta. I didn’t really want to shake hands with her. I avoided her. I didn’t know what to do because I knew that Rudi was not really very happy with who she was.
A: And you been there once before that…
R: With Rudi. He was being honoured. This was before there was the plaque.
A: What was that like?
R: He was treated very well. Rudi was very social and they were speaking in Slovak, which I didn’t really understand a word of. They had a parade. Rudi was not in great shape but we hiked up the hill. It must have been in the 2000s. As were walking in the parade, arm in arm, he reminisced about the time the partisans had met up with the Soviet regiment and they had joined forces. He told me there was an officer, and he was Jewish, and Rudi said that somebody came up behind him and shot the officer and killed him, in the line. Rudi was there and he saw it. Imagine walking in a brigade with all the Soviets and somebody comes along and just shoots once of your commanders.
One of the generals in the resistance was called Brunovski. He was still alive when we were in that parade because I met him. I think he was a Jew as well. I remember the mayor of the town, [Milan] Ostroski, was very nice. In fact, I met him again later on the Vrba-Wetzler March [Trek]. He had a father about Rudi’s age who was complaining about a Jewish partisan who was here in town and he was ruining the purity of the town. [Laughter] He was an antisemite! Rudi met with the father and the father started to talk to him about the Jews. The mayor had to pull his father away. Rudi just thought it was kind of funny. He knew Slovakia was still full of antisemites. Antisemites didn’t faze him. As long as they weren’t murdering him, or torturing him, he didn’t mind them much.
A: Was Rudi happy to be recognized?
R: He was really proud. I could see it.
A: If people think of Rudi Vrba at all, they’d don’t think about how important this period was to him—fighting back. Freedland’s book offers precious little about it.
R: That’s true. He didn’t do much original research.
A: There’s an article I found that mentions three downed airmen, an American guy and two Canadians, who were looked after by the partisans. And the American wrote down that there was only person in the partisans who could translate for them… and that saved their lives.
R: That was likely Rudi. Rudi was very good at that. He was always giving me lists of what to do here, and what to give there. I told you he was very nurturing. He was like that with a lot of people. He was very compassionate. It was one of the things I really liked about him. He liked to help people. And he’d learned English as a child.
A: I wish I could have spoken to that downed Canadian airman.
R: I met him, He went back to Slovakia, once. But I think he was kind of self-absorbed. I don’t remember him being very dynamic.
A: If you believe that American’s narrative, you quickly come to realize how brutal the conditions were. Up in the mountains. In the snow.
R: Rudi had a dream once, about being in the partisans. It was 1989 because the Berlin Wall had just fallen. At the time Rudi said it was not a good sign—which turns out to be right in a way. Shortly after that, he had a dream. This is before he went back to visit Czechoslovakia or any of the eastern Bloc countries. In this dream, Uher was there, the commander [of the partisans], and Rudi loved Uher. Rudi was on the top of this mountain, or on top of a hill, and there was a hut there. A warming hut. And he and Uher were up there. Rudi said, “Look what’s happening.” And Uher said, “Yup, we’re going to have to do the whole thing over again.” When Rudi went back to Slovakia, the first time, on his own, he went to the place he’d dreamed about. The hut was actually there. He’d had some sort of prophetic dream. A visionary dream. Rudi said there was still a lot of antisemitism when he was with partisans. You could feel it everywhere.
A: We assume Rudi would only be haunted by Auschwitz, but that dream harkens back to the time when Uher and his men had teamed up with the Russians, late ’44.
R: I guess so. Around then they heard the Jews from Bratislava were being deported, Rudi was really depressed. He loved his mother. And his commander [Uher] understood it. He commiserated with him. Uher had a wife and a child. And I think he knew that they were dead. He said, “Never mind. The war will be over and you’ll marry and you’ll have your own family and you’ll be able to bond with your own children.” I think Rudi’s mother had been deported and she was in Theresienstadt at that time. There was grief when he thought his mother had died. Later, he joked about it.
A: What did he say?
R: He said she had to lose some weight anyway.
A: That sounds like Rudi. He was a machine gunner, correct?
R: I don’t know. All the partisans have gone now [died]. The last partisan was living in Germany and his name was Dim [pronounced Deem]. Rudi had kept in touch with him. That brigade was famous in Czechoslovakia. Because Rudi’s unit fought alongside the Russians, being a partisan probably saved Rudi’s life, later on, during the Communist purges,
A: How so?
R: He did something stupid when he was in Prague…
A: Which was…
R: It’s a bit complicated. You know there were two other Jews who shared a tent with Rudi? Well, one was the doctor for the brigade, Minarek, and Minarek and Rudi were sort of partners with their own tent. Then they added Kominitsky who slept on the floor. Minarek and Rudi would end up in Prague but Kominitsky became some sort of diplomat in Romania.
Minarek was one of these old-fashioned doctors. He was really dedicated to his patients. He pulled people off the field under fire to bring them into safety. Rudi said that he was the kind of doctor that if the dead were on the battlefront, he would still pull them off the battlefield. He [Rudi] didn’t like that. He thought if the guy is still alive, you pull him off; but you don’t pull him off if he’s dead. He was angry with Minarek because he was so fastidious on that level.
A: In the current crisis [in Gaza], if one of the captives is killed, they still want to get that body back. It’s part of the Jewish tradition…
R: Yes, that’s what Rudi told me. One of the biggest affronts that the Jews had with the Nazis was that they were burning the bodies. Because once the bodies are burned, you can’t be resurrected when the Messiah comes. Rudi thought that was nonsense but he did tell me that. In the Jewish religion, the body is sacred even after death. Rudi and Minarek were educated as very religious Jews, as children. So, they had that in their DNA. They were educated that way. Despite this one disagreement, Rudi admired Minarek and they remained friends for a long time. In fact, I met Minarek when we went to Slovakia in ’91.
A: Okay, so now go back to that stupid thing that Rudi did…
R: After the war, when Minarek got his new papers, he was absolutely livid. This was about 1950 or so. He brought the papers to Rudi. He said, “Look, at what they put on the paper. They have put Israel as my middle name.”
That’s what the Germans would do. They had fought with partisans to get rid of that. It was blatant antisemitism. So, Rudi took that document from Minarek and he went straight to the Central Committee building to complain. I know where it is, because he showed me in Prague. He showed me when he told me this story.
A: Letting them know he and Minarek had fought with the partisans…
R: Yes, I suppose. So, he marched right in there and he got a meeting. He sat down with two officials. “What are you doing here!” he said. “I thought we got rid of this antisemitism when we got rid of the Germans!” That was a crazy thing to do because it was Stalinist Czechoslovakia. But the two guys just looked at each other and said, “Well, we ran out of paper so we had to use the old paper.” They just patted him on the back and told him not to worry. Just go home and do your studies.
Afterwards, Rudi realized he had made a huge mistake. He could have ended up in prison for that. He was lucky. But I think it was also because people really liked him… He had a charisma… and he had that background with the partisans… and that’s probably why they let him do what he did.
A: Would they have known he was a decorated soldier?
R: Are you kidding? The Communist Party knew everything. They would have known he was living with Gerta, for instance. They had a social credit system. Neighbours spied on one another. Without computers, they had everything in his file.
A: Whatever happened to the other guy, Kominitsky?
R: Kominitsky became something in the diplomatic corps after the war. In Romania. His wife and Gerta [Vrba’s first wife] were medical students and friends together. During the purges, when they were purging all the Jews, in the Fifties, under Stalin, they were going to arrest Kominitsky because he was a Slovak. The police had grabbed him and they were driving him back to Slovakia [from Prague], but Kominitsky got this idea [to save himself]. As they were driving, he said, “You know, my very good friend’s mother is in Bratislava and she makes fantastic schnitzel. If we stop on the way, on the way to the prison. She’ll make us schnitzel dinner.”
They stopped there at Helena’s home and she [Helena] contacted Rudi; she told him what was happening. She got the point. She knew what was going on. She’s smart. Somehow, Rudi managed to put pressure on some connection that he had and they got Kominitsky out of there, so Kominitsky was also one of the few Jews who survived those purges. Maybe Rudi succeeded in convincing someone ‘higher up’ that Kominitsky had also served bravely with the partisans. Kominitsky made up a different story later on about how he had survived the purges.
A: Once again, Rudi saved somebody.
R: Later on, in Prague, in ’94, Rudi was in contact with one of their colleagues, Dr. Zemin, and Zemin told Rudi the story that Kominitsky had made up. Rudi looked at him and said, “That’s not how it happened.” People had a false opinion of how great this guy [Kominitsky] was.
A: That level of intrigue is far less common in Canada…
R: Politics are simpler in Canada. You have not had totalitarian regimes for so many years. You just have bits of it. You don’t have the whole nine yards.
A: You’ve characterized Rudi as a fighter, a warrior. If Rudi heard you say that, would he agree with your assessment?
R: I think so.
A: He was a dapper dresser. Maybe that’s connected [to a soldier mentality]?
R: Yes. He liked zippers on everything! That was his military style. It was all cocky. It was all zippers… Do you remember there was this button store in Vancouver, in Gastown? They had fantastic buttons and I had this outfit and I wanted to change the buttons on it. So, Rudi was marching around outside, while I was in the button store, and finally he was getting a little annoyed. He came into the button store. The proprietor said, “Oh, would you like to see the buttons your wife picked for her outfit?” He said, “No, actually I’m a zipper man, myself.” [laughter]
A: Did it ever strike you that his soldier mentality was inappropriate?
R: No. He observed things. He told me, “Look, don’t play the intellectual. It doesn’t come out right when you do that. But if you treat everybody like they’re a customer, that’s perfect for you.” It wasn’t a compliment. But he was right.
A: It was an assessment.
R: But it was good advice. It was advice that helped me.
A: You trusted his judgement about things.
R: I did. A good soldier has to make assessments, as well. His idea was that life was a war. And you’re a soldier in this life. That was his approach. And I think I had a bit of that approach as a child because it was always important for me to be strong. Like, if I went to the doctor, I had to be strong, I wouldn’t cry. That kind of thing. So, that approach [of Rudi’s] probably resonated with me.
When he was in Auschwitz, he looked at himself as a soldier. I think that gave him a lot of strength. To think he was a soldier against Nazis. He already had that. He was a partisan in Auschwitz. Remember, when he was seventeen, or even sixteen, he wanted to escape to England, he wanted to join the English army. His whole idea was that he was going to fight Nazis. He was already mentally a soldier.
A: At age seventeen, he was already thinking, “Okay, I am going to go away somewhere so I can get a gun and fight.”
R: Absolutely.
A: When you fell in love with him, do you think you understood all that immediately?
R: No, I didn’t get it all. It’s only now, in reflection backwards, that I can see it.
A: You were not smitten with a war hero.
R: No, it took a while. At a certain point, I got it. But I think he also told me. He explained it to me [who he was].
A: A soldier mentality is antithetical to our Canadian niceness…
R: It depends on who you are associating with.
A: We say sorry all the time…
R: It depends where you are…
A: Mild-mannered Vancouver is totally divorced from a soldierly attitude. In fact, that’s a pretty good definitive for what it tries to be.
R: But being a soldier is not being un-nice. It has nothing to be with being nice or not nice. It has to do with whether you are strong or not strong. You must be clear in your job. In whatever job it is you have, at any particular point of time, you can have a nice façade and still be a soldier. I think you could be looking at a soldier as being negative.
A: That’s true. I was raised in a non-soldierly world.
R: I think a lot of people who are very competitive can still have a soldierly approach. In Canada, that competitiveness is just hidden a bit more. If it comes across as assertive, you hide it. But it’s still there. I am sort of competitive, but when I first moved to Canada it took me a while to figure out I had to add a lot of words to whatever I said so that I didn’t come across as abrupt. When I moved back to New York, they all thought I was Canadian! [laughter] I have the same fight in me; it’s just a different façade.
A: You are disobeying Rudi now. You are sounding very intellectual.
[laughter]
R: Well, I know! And that’s what he told me not to do!
[laughter]
A: Just be my arm candy and I’ll be your soldier and everything will be alright.
[laughter]
R: Except he didn’t want me to rely on him as my soldier. He wanted me to be my own soldier. He wanted me to have my own strength.
There is no documentation of Vrba’s time with the partisans from his own hand. Keeping a diary would likely not have been wise or permissible. But evidence of the partisan brigade has been found for via records pertaining to three downed airman who were sheltered by Uher’s rebels. Robin Vrba remembers Rudolf Vrba telling her about them.
“Rudi had studied English as a young person,” she confirmed, during an interview in 2023. “When he was in the partisans, [1944-45], Rudi spoke English. There was a Canadian airman that the partisans found and Rudi was the translator. It was either Canadian or American. But I think it was a Canadian. There is some kind of record of this in one of the military museums in Slovakia…” [A museum in Modrovka, curated by Bohuslav Ferianec.]
Canadian aviators Stuart May [left] & Jack Ritch [right] with American Ed Burkhard [centre] evaded capture by living with the partisans and relying on Rudolf Vrba as their translator.
Photo taken in December 1944.