The Escape Artist. The Unforgettable, Cinematic Life of Rudolf Vrba

 

The Escape Artist
The Unforgettable, Cinematic Life of Rudolf Vrba

 

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland was published by Harper in 2022. It is 376 pages and it includes twelve pages of black-and-white photographs and maps, as well as an index, end notes, and a bibliography.

 

In The Escape Artist, Jonathan Freedland, a British journalist, tells the story of Rudolf Vrba (1924-2006), who, the book claims, was "the first Jew ever known to break out of Auschwitz and make his way to freedom – one of only four who pulled off that near-impossible feat."

 

The Escape Artist is one of the very best books I've ever read on any topic, and I recommend it without reservation to any reader with a high school or above reading level. The subject matter is, of course, important, but in lesser hands Vrba's tale would be an overwhelmingly agonizing read. Freedland's masterful skill performs the minor miracle of crafting a graphic record of the Holocaust that is also a page-turner. Freedland pulls no punches. He informs the reader of the exact nature of the hell the Nazis operated. But Freedland moves quickly, and brings the reader with him on a breathtaking ride. In any case, only a portion of the book takes place in Auschwitz. The rest records Vrba's childhood, his heroic efforts to alert the world to the Nazi genocide of Jews, and his final days in Canada and the United States.

Poland As a Pigsty

 Anna D. submitted this comment and I hope it gets more attention than it might in the comment section. 

I live in Poland and for a long time I have noticed a trend in some circles to portray Poles, the whole nation, the whole society, as anti-Semitic, xenophobic, primitive and disgusting.

I always ask myself then who are the people who spare no effort to constantly discredit and depreciate Polish society as a whole. What group do these people belong to, in their own opinion? What are their motivations? What do they want to achieve?

The search for truth cannot be based on hatred, because hatred blinds. I ask if these people are looking for the truth. Because I rather have the impression that they take a club and hit with all their might to break all values. And present Polish society as mindless, primitive and aggressive - almost animals.

For example, I recently read a review about the 2021 film "The Wedding" by Wojciech Smarzowski.

Quote from a review on filmweb.pl

" Poland A.D. 2021 is therefore reviewed in Poland A.D. 1941 and - unfortunately - still has the same face. The changes are only cosmetic: the place of the Jews was taken by other "others": Ukrainians and Vietnamese, and the Germans stab the Polish ego not with a bayonet, but with capital.

No need to beat around the bush: Poland in Smarzowski's lens is a pigsty full of xenophobia, philandering, drunkenness and brawling. The bride's father, of course, manages the butcher shop, and the director repeats Art Spiegelman's metaphor from "Maus", showing the Pole as a piglet. Partly as a victim in the slaughterhouse of history, and partly as a pig that does dirty things to others. Once a hero who hides Jews in a barn, once a torturer who burns them in a barn.”

Germans Good Poles Bad The Forward features Bieganski

Laura E. Adkins from her website
Czeslawa Kwoka, 14-year-old Polish Catholic murdered in Auschwitz. 

The Forward, "one of the most influential American Jewish publications," advances the bigoted, divisive, and history-distorting Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype in a January 31, 2023 article by Forward opinion editor Laura E. Adkins. The article is entitled "Poland and Germany Have Long Taken Opposing Approaches to Holocaust Remembrance. Touring Them with Doug Emhoff, the Difference Was Stark."
 
Doug Emhoff is the husband of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

 

Adkins' article could have simply been titled, "Germans Good; Polaks Bad."

 

Adkins' biography identifies her as "an award-winning writer, editor, and speaker based in New York. She is the Opinion Editor of the Forward."

The Holocaust: An Unfinished History by Dan Stone. Book Review from the Daily Mail

 

New book: The Holocaust: An Unfinished History by Dan Stone. Alleges that *all* of Europe, more or less, produced active participants in the Holocaust. From Sweden to North Africa, from France to Ukraine, local leaders contributed to the Holocaust. No country comes across well, including previously celebrated countries like Holland and Bulgaria.

Read the review here. Thank you to Jerzy for sending this in. 

Man Tosses Molotov Cocktail at New Jersey Synagogue

 

Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27

 Czeslawa Kwoka. Died in Auschwitz when she was 14. 

Katarzyna Kwoka. She was Czeslawa's mother and she also died in Auschwitz 

Czeslawa and Katarzyna were both Polish Catholics. 

January 27 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, on the anniversary of the Red Army marching on Auschwitz. 

We can do two things at once. We can acknowledge the horror of what the Nazis planned and did to Jews. 

We can also acknowledge what the Nazis planned and did to Poland and to Catholic Poles. 

Here's an unedited transcript from an interview I did with a university student. 

"I get this feeling that Polish people don't really have a full respect for Jewish people and that there is an anti-Semitism still lingering and the main thing that makes me think that is an article I read in the Washington Post a month or two ago and what happened was that some warehouse that was very near Auschwitz was recently turned into a discotheque."

Me: "I know this will sound like a ridiculous question, but can you tell me what Auschwitz was?"

My goal: to discover if informant knew that Poles had been interned in Auschwitz.

"Auschwitz had been a concentration camp that a great number of Jewish people were brought to by train. A lot of Jews worked there and died of starvation.  And I wanna say that, uh, zyklon b, the chemical that was thrown into the so called shower stalls was instituted there."

Me: "Do you know about the history of non-Jews at Auschwitz?"  

"No, I don't any specific history of non-Jews in Auschwitz. "

YIVO's Burgeoning Bieganski Industry

 

Elzbieta Janicka, identified by YIVO as an "historian of literature, cultural anthropologist, visual artist. M.A. at the Université Paris VII Denis Diderot; Ph.D. at Warsaw University" appears to be making a tidy living by disseminating the Bieganski, Brute Polak stereotype at YIVO.

A previous post mentions a course she is teaching at YIVO. That course is described in ugly, bigoted, inflammatory language. 

Jerzy sent in info about another Janicka course. This course description asserts that "antisemitism remains a community building force and one of the most powerful political tools behind the collapse of liberal democratic institutions."

I copied the above sentence from the YIVO website. I left out one CYA weasel word and I did not use ellipsis. I did that because I have contempt for YIVO and Janicka's hate-mongering project, and because I have no patience with her attempt at using weasel words to CYA. In any case, the word I left out is "non-negligible." It's such a stupid attempt at CYA. Janicka, I have never heard of you before, and I don't know you from Adam, but in using CYA weasel words, you have no intellectual class. Assert something or don't assert it. That's what real scholarship does. 

I don't live in Poland and I am in no position to assess the truth value of Janicka's assertion. I asked some folks who live in Poland for their assessment. 

One said, "I am a left-wing, liberal Pole who despises the current Polish government. Even from my point of view, what Ms Janicka says here is utter falsehood. These are obviously incorrect statements and I do not believe you could cite any factual support for them. If she is teaching about Poland based on that, she is either defrauding the students and her employer by knowingly providing them with incorrect information, or she has no idea about Poland and is grossly incompetent."

Another said, "I am a conservative leaning Pole who does not hate the current government and I agree with [the above quoted liberal Pole] 100%. I despise how Ms. Janicka is spewing hatred between Jewish people and Poles. This is evil."

Another said, that Janicka is a "charismatic figure among radical, left wing intellectuals who's personal mission is critique of Polish culture and society as 'catholic,' 'bigoted,' 'traditionally antisemitic,' 'nationalistic' etc. Unfortunately Janicka very skillfully translates her own obsessions and prejudices into fashionable humanistic discourses. It has nothing to do however with reality and basic scientific decency. It is a tragic case which illustrates a general problem of contemporary degeneration of academic standards."

Visit the YIVO site for Janicka's course here

If you'd like to contact YIVO leadership about their anti-Polish classes, contact information is here.