Talk:Rudolf Vrba

New book coming out later this year

The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World by Jonathan Freedland should be released on Oct. 18, 2022. -- Beland (talk) 04:06, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

@Beland: Yes I have that book and have read it. There's quite a bit of pertinent information that should be in the article, and I hope to integrate it. Reading through this article, by the way, I'm struck by the lack of information on his character and personal life. I trust that is due to lack of sourcing, and the Freedland book can fill in that gap.Given the length of this article and the importance of the subject, I think that is worth exploring in a section. Coretheapple (talk) 19:13, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

WP:URFA/2020 and FA concerns

I was going to nominate this article for WP:TFA for Vrba's 100th birthday, but I am concerned that the article does not meet the featured article criteria anymore. After skimming through the article, most of the text seems to be about the Vrba–Wetzler report. While this is an important part of Vrba's biography that needs to be mentioned at length, much of the information talks about the imapct of the report, which would be better in the report's article. The lede is also missing information about other aspects of Vrba's biography including his testimony at trials, activities after WWII and death. Is anyone interested in fixing up this article? Pinging original nominator Jayjg. Z1720 (talk) 17:44, 25 June 2024 (UTC)

Vrba and Zionism

The article says "Kulka also disagreed with Vrba regarding his criticism of Zionists" - but nowhere in the article is there any discussion of what these criticisms were.

Here is what Vrba said in an interview for the Thames Television series The World at War:

“The Zionist movement of Europe played a very important role in the mass extermination of Jews. Indeed, I believe that without the :cooperation of Zionists it would have been a much more difficult task….

[The Zionists] said that we are not Czechoslovaks or we are not Germans, we are not French, we are Jews and we must, as Jews, go back to our :country, to Israel or to Palestine and found our state …

Then came the Nuremberg Law, which was a law, issued by a nominally civilized state [Nazi Germany], which said that Jews do not belong to :Europe, but to Palestine. …

So, on one platform, Nazism and Zionism had something in common: they both preached that Jews don’t belong to Europe but to Palestine. …

And naturally, the Germans said: ‘You see the Jews may not trust us but they will trust you’, to the Zionists, ‘because they have seen that :they have always told them actually the truth: that you belong to Palestine, that you are a foreign element here.’ …

And so the Jewish councils were preferably selected from well-known Zionists. And, because the well-known Zionists became respectable, many :Jews who were respectable anyway became Zionists. So they formed Jewish councils from a Zionist core, fortified by respectable members of :society: top lawyers, top business people, top economists and that was the Jewish councils. …

They were promised by the Germans or by the local fascist government to be protected from any discrimination because they are needed for :administering of the Jewish affairs. …

So you had here already a Zionist clique enforced by money of big Jewish businessmen who would be prepared to go along with the :discrimination against the masses of the Jewish population which were neither rich nor Zionist, and in other words did not belong to the :clique. …

So I didn’t trust them in spite of the fact that the Nazis gave them the right after the Nuremberg Laws. I considered them plain fascists :and I considered them from the very start as despicable creatures who deal with the fascists and take profit out of it in order to be :exempted from discrimination conducted against the others. …

So I didn’t trust the Nazis any more or any less than the Jewish Zionist councils. Indeed, I realised that the Zionists and the Nazis are :approximately identical enemies of mine who have got both one thing in common, to get me out from home with 25 kilos to an unknown place and :to leave my mother completely defenceless at home. …

The young people, the core of resistance, is always 16 to 30. Every soldier knows that they are the best material for fighting. … I was :flabbergasted by the fact that the Zionists who pretended to be the protectors of the Jews, the first thing which they agreed to was to let :go away a potential core of resistance who could in the last resort protect the families with force if necessary. :…”[1]

Wellington Bay (talk) 15:40, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

And specifically on the Kastner case:

“I am a Jew. In spite of that – indeed because of that – I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war.

This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price :of silence. Among them was Dr. [Rudolf] Kastner, leader of the council which spoke for all Jews in Hungary…

While I was prisoner number 44070 at Auschwitz – the number is still on my arm – I compiled careful statistics of the exterminations … I :took these terrible statistics with me when I escaped in 1944 and I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that :Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers. … Kastner went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare :some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.’

Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kastner up in S.S. uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends. Nor did the sordid :bargaining end there.

Kastner paid Eichmann several thousand dollars. With this little fortune, Eichmann was able to buy his way to freedom when Germany :collapsed, to set himself up in the Argentine…”

Dr. Rudolf Vrba, Daily Herald, February 1961 (cited in Ben Hecht, Perfidy, 1962, p. 231).

Wellington Bay (talk) 15:49, 26 August 2024 (UTC)