I Cannot forgive (AKA I Escaped from Auschwitz)

Rudolf Vrba was born on September 11, 1924 in Topolcany, Slovakia (which was at the time Czechoslovakia). He was born named Walter Rosenberg. He changed his name to Rudolph Vrba to protect him and his family against future arrest. In March 1942 when Rudolph was 17, he ignored orders to assemble for deportation to Poland. Therefore, he was sent to the Novaky transition camp in Slovakia, where he made an unsuccessful escape attempt. He was then sent to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland before being sent to Auschwitz I on June 30, 1942. He was assigned to work at Auschwitz-Birkenau where he cleaned the train wagons of dead bodies and he organizaed the personal possessions that the prisoners were forced to leave behind. Rudoplh realized that if people knew what was happening at Auschwitz, there would be resistance as well as panic, which would slow down the Nazi killing processes. Rudolph started taking mental note of the estimated amount of people who had been killed and where they came from. In early 1944 when he learned that the total Jewish population of Hungary, which was about 1 million, was coming to the camp, he knew he had to escape and warn them about what was happening. Rudolph worked with his friend Alfred Wetzler to plan a successful escape from the camp. On the evening of April 10, 1944, Rudolph and Alfred began their 11 night walk to Slovakia, which was 80 miles south. While the 2 didn’t reach most Hunagrian Jews, they got the news to Switzerland. By June in 1944, the Brirtish and American media were reporting the realities of Auschwitz which halted the deportations a month later. After this, Rudolph went on the marry his childhood friend, Greta. However the marriage fell apart quickly. He studied biology and chemistry in Prague before moving to Israel, then Britain, and then finally Canada. He died on Mrch 27, 2006 in Vancouver. Today he is still noted for his heroism in saving tens of thousands of Budapests Jews.