Jonathan P. Baird

One extremely disturbing trend going on now is the popularity of far right ideas, including those of neo-nazis and white supremacists. It is a collective madness and examples of how their toxic ideas lead to disaster are not hard to find.

A jury was just selected in the case of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter who killed eleven in 2018. Then there is the case of the mass shooter who killed eight people at the mall in Allen Texas. He had swastika and SS lightning bolt logo tattoos and had posted pro-white supremacist and neo-nazi materials on social media.

On May 23, a 19 year old driver of a U-Haul truck crashed into security barriers outside the White House. The driver wanted to kill President Biden, “to seize power”. He had a Nazi flag in his truck and told police he admired Hitler.

These far right extremists grow in the political ecosystem created by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. They are operating more openly in the context of an anti-democratic, conspiracy theory-driven MAGA movement based on the Big Lie and the Great Replacement Theory.

In considering why there has been a resurgence in neo-nazi ideas, one less-considered explanation is the fading remembrance of the Holocaust. For many years, memory of that event acted as a bar but there are now fewer people alive who lived through that experience and educational efforts to communicate the story have been grossly inadequate.

According to a 2020 survey, nearly two-thirds of young adults between ages 18-39 were unaware six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. 23% said they believed the Holocaust was a myth or had been exaggerated or they weren’t sure. This reflects a dismal level of awareness.

Many young people, especially young white men, are taken in by Nazi propaganda on social media, like their lies are some kind of cool thing. I believe a large number have no idea what the Nazis actually did in Europe between 1933-1945. That makes it easier to swallow the hate.

Part of the historical ignorance is that very important Holocaust stories remain unknown. Rudolf Vrba’s story is one of those stories. Vrba’s story is told in the important book, The Escape Artist, by the British journalist, Jonathan Freedland. Vrba was one of the first Jews to escape from Auschwitz. He arrived at Auschwitz at age 17 in 1942. Because he was young, healthy, and he could work, Vrba survived.

From the start, Vrba saw through Nazi lies. When Jews were deported to Auschwitz, the Nazis told them they were being deported to the east to be resettled. Many wanted to believe that. Vrba saw how those who were deemed unable to work were immediately sent to the gas chambers when they arrived at Auschwitz. He also saw how those arriving at Auschwitz had no idea what was in store for them.

Vrba had a unique perspective. Over a period of two years, he evaded death. He had help from the Jewish resistance on the inside. He moved around and finagled different work positions that provided an all-sided view of the concentration camp.

From the start, his goal was escape. He saw how the Nazis lied about their intentions to the new arrivals. They gave people soap to create the misleading impression that people were going to a shower. They then went to immense effort to cover their tracks to hide the genocide. They did everything they could to prevent knowledge by the outside world.

Vrba wanted to escape to warn the world about what was going on. He believed he could throw a monkey wrench into the smooth working of the Nazi death machine. He knew the Nazis planned to exterminate one million Hungarian Jews and he believed if he could get out, word would spread and that extermination could be foiled.

With a trusted friend, Fred Wetzler, they figured an escape plan. They dug a hole in the outer camp under a lumber pile where they hid for three days. The Nazis with their 200 hunting dogs searched feverishly to find them but after three days, they stopped. That was the Nazi SS routine which they invariably followed like clockwork. After three days, their capture became the job of the Gestapo outside the camp.

Vrba knew the Nazis kept close track of all prisoners. Within an hour of a prisoner’s absence, they could tell there was an escape attempt.

In April 1944, Vrba and Wetzler escaped. Over eleven days, traveling only at night, with no maps or compass, they crossed rivers and forests of Nazi-occupied Poland. They wanted to reach their home country of Slovakia. They had no assistance outside Auschwitz and they knew any mistake probably meant death.

Miraculously, exhausted, undernourished and with painful, misshapen feet, they crossed the border out of Poland. They were able to contact the Jewish Council.

For two weeks, in a basement, they were de-briefed and the first account of what was actually going on at Auschwitz poured out. They were heavily cross-examined to prove the authenticity of their story but Vrba had a photographic memory of all transports, the number of cars and the number of prisoners. He knew where every group of Jews in the camp were from. He had memorized tattoo numbers of various groups so he could identify where Jews were from based on the Nazi branding number.

Vrba and Wetzler dictated a 32 page single space report. With precision, Vrba drew maps of Auschwitz-Birkenau that showed the factories powered by slave labor, the gas chambers and the crematoria. Vrba meticulously explained the transports, the Nazi selection process of who lived and who died. It was the fullest account written at the time and it was conveyed to FDR, Churchill, and Pope Pius XII.

Vrba’s efforts saved the lives of 200,000 Jews from Budapest. Over 400,000 other Hungarian Jews perished. Vrba believed that just the knowledge of the Holocaust getting out would provoke action. Tragically, the Hungarian Jewish leader Rezso Kasztner cut a deal with the Nazis and Adolf Eichmann. In exchange for saving himself and 1684 Jews he selected, Kasztner remained silent about the Nazi plan to exterminate all the Jews of Hungary.

Vrba remained furious at the Jewish Council as well as the Nazis. He believed that facts could save lives. He believed that if the Hungarian Jews had known what was awaiting them at Auschwitz, they would have done something to avoid their fate.

Neither FDR nor Churchill acted when they had the information Vrba provided. Jewish leaders asked the Allied leaders to bomb the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz and that was never done even though the Nazis’ industrialized killing machine was resulting in 15,000 murders daily. Even after D-Day, the Holocaust slaughter continued at a frenzied pace.

Vrba was interviewed in Claude Lanzmann’s epic documentary Shoah but he is an unknown even though as Freedland has argued, he was as much a hero as Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler or Primo Levi.

America faces its own continuing fascist threat. Denying and trying to hide the Holocaust was the original Nazi strategy. Stories like Vrba’s deserve far wider circulation because they are an antidote to the legacy of denial and historical ignorance.