Television

“Escape From Auschwitz” tells the daring, little-known story of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, above and below.

by Curt Schleier
Special To The Jewish Week

‘Escape From Auschwitz’:
Saving Hungarian Jews

The PBS documentary “Escape
From Auschwitz,” which airs in April, tells the story of how two men were able to break out of the death camp and save the lives of 120,000 Hungarian Jews. The story was not widely known until recently.
Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, both Slovak Jews, spent two years in the camp and witnessing the atrocities. They became determined to escape to get the story out. They felt if the Jews knew their fate, they would more forcefully resist deportation. It was risky and both had relatively soft jobs within the camp. They also knew the consequences if they were recaptured — hanging — but were prepared to sacrifice their lives.
Their time

came when the camp was being expanded to handle the expected influx of more than a half-million Hungarian Jews. With the cooperation of other inmates, they were able to hide in a huge woodpile. They stayed there until prison guards ended their search several days later and then began their journey toward the Czech Republic. This, too, was fraught with danger since the area surrounding the camp had been resettled by German nationals who’d delight in turning them in.
But subsisting on scavenged food and with the occasional help of Poles who provided food and directions, they made it Prague. There they presented their case to the Jewish Council, whose members at first did not believe them. While they knew Jews were being killed, they had no idea of the scale and scope of the murders; they couldn’t come to grips with the fact that killing Jews had become an assembly line operation. But once Vrba and Wetzler convinced them, the Council immediately forwarded this information to Rudolf Kastner, the head of their counterpart agency in Hungary.
Surprisingly, Kastner ignored the information. The filmmakers suggest this was because he was in the midst of secret negotiations with Adolph Eichmann. He was attempting to exchange Hungarian Jewish lives for 10,000 trucks filled with supplies from the Allies. Kastner had even managed to obtain the release of 1,000 Jews as a good will gesture.
But his efforts were doomed to failure, and ultimately 600,000 Jews were deported and died. Kastner emigrated to Israel and was subsequently assassinated by a Jew who thought him a collaborator.
But Vrba’s and Wetzler’s efforts were not in vain. The information they’d smuggled out of the camp (later known as the Auschwitz Protocol) was forwarded to Winston Churchill. It eventually led to the bombing of several government buildings in Budapest where several high-ranking Nazi officials were killed, effectively halting the remaining deportations.
“Escape From Auschwitz” uses recreations and interviews with experts in the field to tell this dramatic and exciting story. Vrba’s and Wetzler’s work deserves a wider audience.
“Escape From Auschwitz” airs April 30, 8 p.m. on Channel 13.

Other TV Fare
As usual when searching For
Jewish-themes television, the place to look this spring is PBS. The network will re-air “A Yiddish World Remembered” in March to coincide with its fund driving efforts.
If you didn’t see it when it aired originally, it is the story of Jewish life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe as recalled by some of the last remaining eyewitnesses. Through their words, the cities and shtetls of Eastern Europe come alive again, accompanied by archival films, vintage photographs and traditional klezmer and cantorial music. It is extremely moving.
Under its Great Performances banner, the network will also air “Primo” (April 24, 10-11:30 p.m.). The one-man play, written by and starring Sir Antony Sher, enjoyed a limited but successful run in New York two years ago. It tells the Holocaust experiences of Primo Levi, the Italian chemist whose life was transformed when interned at Auschwitz in the final year of World War II. Based on Levi’s classic memoir, “Surviving Auschwitz,” the show premiered at London’s National Theatre before transferring to Broadway, where it was taped for broadcast.
HBO will air a documentary, “Autism: The Musical” (March 25, 8 p.m.), which sounds neither Jewish nor tempting. The fact is that in 1980, autism was a relatively rare disorder, diagnosed in one in 10,000 children in the United States. Now it is one in 150.
The documentary follows a Jewish woman whose son is diagnosed with the disease. She is determined to defy the expectations of the so-called experts in the field and get a small group of autistic children to write, rehearse and perform their own full-length musical.
Finally, the Shalom Network (Channel 1005 Entertainment on Demand on Time Warner Cable) will air an array of programs in May to commemorate Israel’s 60th anniversary. This includes interviews with a number of people who participated in the establishment of the Jewish state.
The network will also air special holiday editions of its children’s show “Mr. Bookstein’s Store” timed for Purim and Passover. The story of Esther and the Passover seder will be told.