The escape of Vrba and Wetzler from Auschwitz-Birkenau
Vrba and Wetzler hid in a dugout hole under a pile of construction planks, where they waited for three days until the alert for the escaped prisoners was called off.
Vrba and Wetzler left their hiding place under the planks and escaped from the outer perimeter of the camp towards the village of Pisarowice.
The pair of heroes arrived in the Slovak village of Skalité, where they received help from local residents Ondrej and Agáta Čanecký.
After a march of more than 130 km, moving from Skalité to Čadca and from Čadca to Žilina, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler began to write a report on the atrocities that were taking place just beyond the Slovak borders, near the Polish town of Oświęcim.
Report
One of the most important documents of World War II
The escape from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was not just the flight of two men to freedom. It was a well-thought-out plan of resistance, aimed at informing Western allies, the church, and the free world about the cruelty of the Nazis.
The Vrba-Wetzler report eventually became public, and the persistent pressure from the allies, Western media, and a personal letter from Pope Pius XII to the Hungarian admiral Horthy ultimately resulted in the saving of approximately 200,000 human lives!
No one else in the history of the Holocaust managed to save so many lives – therefore, we can rightly call Alfréd Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba HEROES.
Why the Vrba-Wetzler Memorial?
The initiator of the idea to establish a tradition of marches along the approximate route of Vrba and Wetzler's escape is Fedor Gál, with the entire event organized by the Czech branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ ČR) and the Slovak civic association Vrba-Wetzler Memorial.
With the goal of commemorating this heroic act, we have been setting out since 2014 on marches from Auschwitz to Žilina, reading from the books "I Escaped from Auschwitz" and "What Dante Did Not See," which were written years after the escape by Vrba and Wetzler.
Do you want to join us?
