Meet the Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

Dec 18 2022 by The Daily Beast

 
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I first encountered Rudolph Vrba, distinguished professor of biochemistry at the University of Vancouver, survivor of Auschwitz, back in the late 1980s, when I had the privilege of watching Shoah, Claude Lanzmann’s epic film masterpiece about the Holocaust. The purpose of the film, says Yale historian Timothy Snyder, is “to bring the viewer into contact with the seemingly impossible, the unqualified nothingness of mass death.”

Lanzmann succeeds. Shoah is an exceptionally...

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