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  • Rudolf Vrba
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  • Details from the report were broadcast on June 15, 1944 by the BBC, and on June 20 by The New York Times, prompting world leaders to appeal to Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy to halt the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, which had been proceeding at a rate of 12,000 a day. After 475,000 had already been deported, the mass deportations were stopped on July 9, 1944, saving up to 200,000 from the gas chambers.
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Birth Date
  • 1924-11-11
death place
  • British Columbia, Canada
Spouse
  • Gerta Vrbová, Robin Vrba
Name
  • Rudolf Vrba
  • Vrba, Rudolf
Ethnicity
  • Jewish
Education
  • Dr. Tech. Sc. in chemistry and biology
Caption
  • Dr. Vrba in 1997
Alternative Names
  • Rosenberg, Walter
Date of Death
  • 2006-03-27
Alma mater
  • Prague Technical University
Employer
Birth Place
  • Topoľčany, Czechoslovakia
death date
  • 2006-03-27
Image size
  • 140
Place of Birth
Place of death
Children
  • Dr. Helena Vrbová, Zuza Vrbová Jackson
Box Width
  • 300
Occupation
  • Associate professor of pharmacology
Death Cause
  • Cancer
Known For
  • His escape from Auschwitz, and co-authorship of the Vrba-Wetzler report
Date of Birth
  • 1924-09-11
Short Description
  • Author of 1944 report on Auschwitz concentration camp
Birth name
  • Walter Rosenberg
Parents
  • Elias Rosenberg, Helena Grunfeldova
abstract
  • Details from the report were broadcast on June 15, 1944 by the BBC, and on June 20 by The New York Times, prompting world leaders to appeal to Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy to halt the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, which had been proceeding at a rate of 12,000 a day. After 475,000 had already been deported, the mass deportations were stopped on July 9, 1944, saving up to 200,000 from the gas chambers. The timing of the report's distribution remains a source of controversy. It was made available to officials in Hungary and elsewhere before the deportations to Auschwitz had begun, but was not disseminated further until weeks later. Vrba believed that more lives could have been saved if it had been publicized sooner, reasoning that, had Hungary's Jews known they were to be killed in the gas chambers—and not resettled, as the Nazis were telling them—they might have chosen to run or fight rather than board the trains. He alleged that the report had been withheld deliberately by the Jewish-Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee in order not to jeopardize complex, and ultimately futile, negotiations between the committee and Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of the deportations, to exchange Jewish lives for money, trucks, and other goods—the so-called "blood for goods" proposals.