The Auschwitz Escape by Joel C. Rosenberg

As regular readers of this blog will know, I have a mild obsession with books on the Holocaust and WWII. A glance at my bookshelf might even convince you that I’m rather discerning when it comes to novels set in the time of Hitler, Himmler, Churchill and co, and that I won’t just dive into any old WWII book. Yet Joel C. Rosenberg succeeded in drawing me in from page one in a frantic suspense novel based, albeit loosely, on real events.

The details he describes in the rounding up of Jews, the bravery of resistance groups against the Nazi onslaught and the precise and vivid descriptions of the Auschwitz death camp made me feel as though I was in the midst of those horrors myself.

I visited Auschwitz not too long ago with a Jewish colleague of mine and I will never forget the somber atmosphere that still prevails there. The air is thick with surviving sorrow, like a dense blanket of anguish that is perpetually draped over the horror-struck compound. It was by no means a fun day out, but having seen it with my own eyes engenders more appreciation for accounts such as Rosenberg’s – the tangible brutality of mounds of shoes, collections of eye glasses, clothes and valuables stripped from the prisoners and hoarded in storerooms, the hunger and bleak conditions...the gas chambers. His descriptions of life in the camp are so vivid and evocative that it reads like a biographical account rather than a work of fiction. This is owing, of course, to his thorough research of the subject, and on account of the few successful escapees from Auschwitz.

And who doesn’t love a good escape story? Just think of The Shawshank Redemption and Papillon. If you liked those, you will love this – it’s simply masterful. It is so unlikely that one can’t believe that they’d be able to pull it off. During months of careful planning and risky meetings, the small group of men rehearse their escape. The main motivation behind which is based on their commitment to expose the well-kept secret of the atrocities being committed in the so-called Nazi labour camps.

Their aim is to motivate the allied governments to help release the prisoners or, at the very least, stop the relentless transport of Jewish prisoners to the camp where they are gassed on a daily basis in their thousands. So in their planning, their prime focus lies in gathering information and documents as evidence of the atrocities taking place at the camp.

The story of the escape of Jacob Weisz, a young Jewish man from Berlin and Jean-Luc Leclerc, a pastor from Le Chambon in France (the two main characters in this novel) is based on the true story of Slovakian Jew Rudolf Vrba who escaped Auschwitz in the exact same way Jacob and Luc did – though I won’t give any spoilers here.

Incidentally, I must say I find it upsetting that it took the world and especially the allies so long to acknowledge what was happening to the Jews in Europe under the Nazi regime. Both Roosevelt and Churchill were informed and still they did nothing. One cannot but wonder what would have happened if they had reacted sooner, if they had dropped bombs on the railway lines to stop the transport of prisoners and if they had managed to liberate the Jews from these death camps. On the other hand, one dreads to think of the even more devastating losses and continued horrors that would have occurred – and what sort of world we would be living in today – if they hadn’t intervened at all.

Nevertheless, it is always inspiring to play witness or to read accounts of the bravery of the human spirit when under threat. How, based on so much uncertainty, these guys risked everything for the opportunity to tell the Jewish story. This is a tale of the very worst – and the very best – of humanity.

Don’t be dissuaded by the ‘Christian Fiction’ label that’s been hung on the The Auschwitz Escape. In fact, I found the references to religion and Christianity contextual and quite relevant. He mentions, for instance, the role that Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish sentiments played in Hitler’s justification for the Holocaust. Once I accepted this aspect as part of the deal I focused on the interesting cast of characters and the fast-paced suspense – and finished the 466 pages in two days.