Language:
English
Year of publication:
2003
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Genocide Research
Angaben zur Quelle:
5,4 (2003) 565-586
Keywords:
Vrba, Rudolf
;
Wetzler, Alfred,
;
Senesh, Hannah,
;
Rumkowski, Mordecai Hayim
;
Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
;
Jews
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Nazi concentration camps
;
Jewish ghettos
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
Abstract:
Discusses reports compiled by five Jews who managed to escape from Auschwitz in April-May 1944: Siegfried Lederer, Rudolf Vrba (Walter Rosenberg) and Alfred Wetzler (Josef Lanik), and Czesław (Bezalel) Mordowicz and Arnošt Rosin. The Vrba-Wetzler Report was sent by the Slovak Jewish Council to the Hungarian Jewish leadership, Zionist representatives in Switzerland and Istanbul, the Vatican, London, and the U.S. In June 1944 the report was published in the Swiss press, which alerted the world and led world leaders to protest. As a result, the deportations from Hungary stopped; therefore, Vrba's and Wetzler's escape saved the lives of 100,000 Budapest Jews. Remarkably, this report never reached the prospective victims of the Holocaust, because their dissemination among the Jews was impeded by the Jewish leadership in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. After the war the Vrba-Wetzler Report was neglected in Israel; the Auschwitz escapees are not mentioned in Israeli historiography or at Holocaust commemoration events. In contrast, Hannah Szenes is lauded as a heroine even though her mission actually failed, and in recent years there has been an attempt to see Chaim Mordechai Rumkowski as a hero. This can be explained by the fact that Szenes acted as a representative of the Zionist leadership, while Vrba acted on his own initiative. In addition, the story of his report is an accusation against the Jewish leadership's inaction.
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