The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

Product Information

According to Kárný, Lederer regarded fleeing to Switzerland as cowardice and desertion, even though Kárný notes that his testimony on Auschwitz would have been more credible if he had delivered it in person.

According to Kárný, Lederer's role in the latter group, which during 1944 focused on sabotaging the Roderstein capacitor factory and a local Wehrmacht installation is unclear. Explaining the reaction to the possibility of imminent death, Israeli historian and survivor Jakov Tsur stated that no one was capable of understanding Auschwitz until he or she had arrived and was undergoing selection. But at trials and in interviews, he continued fighting to bring Nazis and their collaborators to justice. Deported to Auschwitz concentration camp on 18 December 1943, Lederer was forced to wear both yellow and red triangles, marking him as a Jew and a political prisoner. Auschwitz, 1940–1945: węzłowe zagadnienia z dziejów obozu [ Auschwitz, 1940–1945: Important Issues from the History of the Camp] (in Polish).Then, Freedland argues that Vrba was the first Jew to escape from Auschwitz to warn their people of the impending doom awaiting them in the camp. Pestek opposed the Holocaust; he was a devout Catholic and was infatuated with Renée Neumann, a Jewish prisoner. The murder mystery builds up to the Gala weekend, and we don’t even know who the victim is for quite a while, but it’s pretty evident Macaire is determined to be president at all costs. It’s the first time I’ve read anything of that period written from a Russian’s point of view who ended up in the camps along with others who had been captured.

Kárný, who felt that Lederer's actions needed no embellishment, found that Lederer and the Czech journalist Eduard Kotora, who publicized the former's actions, exaggerated them.For a time he hung out with fellow teenagers forced to wear the yellow star, including Gerta Sidonova, whom he would eventually marry. With the help of a Czech gendarme, he smuggled himself into the ghetto to warn an engineer who was a friend of his, probably Julius Grünberger. Alfred Cierer, a Czech Jewish industrialist, and his son Jakov Tsur moved in because they knew Lederer.