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Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba (11 September 1924 – 27 March 2006) escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland on 10 April 1944, at the height of the Holocaust, and co-wrote a report containing the most detailed information available at the time about the mass murder taking place inside the camp. Originally from Slovakia, Vrba and and fellow escapee Alfréd Wetzler fled Auschwitz three weeks after German forces invaded Hungary and began deporting its Jewish population to the camp. The 40 pages of information the men passed to Jewish officials when they arrived in Slovakia on 24 April, which included that arrivals were being gassed and not resettled as expected, became known as the Vrba–Wetzler report.〔Kárný (1998), p. (553ff ); for the report, ("The Vrba–Wetzler Report" ), Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team.〕 While it confirmed material in earlier reports from Polish and other escapees, historian Miroslav Kárný writes that it was unique in its "unflinching detail."〔Karny (1998), p. 554.〕 There was a delay of several weeks before the report was distributed widely enough to gain the attention of governments. Mass transports of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz began on 15 May 1944 at a rate of 12,000 people a day. Most went straight to the gas chambers. Vrba argued until the end of his life that the deportees would have refused to board the trains had they known they were not being resettled. His position is generally not accepted by Holocaust historians.〔For example, see Braham (2011), pp. 48–49.〕 Throughout June and into July 1944, material from the Vrba–Wetzler and earlier reports appeared in newspapers and radio broadcasts in the United States and Europe, particularly in Switzerland, prompting world leaders to appeal to Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy to halt the deportations.〔Lipstadt (1993), pp. 233–237; Kárný (1998), p. (558 ).〕 On 7 July 1944 he ordered an end to them, possibly fearing he would be held responsible after the war. By then 437,000 Jews had been deported, constituting almost the entire Jewish population of the Hungarian countryside, but another 200,000 in Budapest were saved.〔Bauer (1997), p. (194 ), for 437,000 deported from the provinces; Bauer (1994), p. 156, for 437,000 deported to Auschwitz between 14 May and 7 July, according to German figures; Braham (2011), p. 45, for the countryside being emptied of Jews by July 1944; Bauer (1994), p. 233, for "probably close to 200,000" Jews remaining in Budapest, though see p. 156 for "()hat was left were the 250,000 Budapest Jews."〕 == Early life and arrest == Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg in Topoľčany, Czechoslovakia.〔 (He took the name Rudolf Vrba in April 1944 after his escape, and changed his name legally after the war.) His parents, Elias Rosenberg and Helena Rosenberg (née Gruenfeldová), the latter from Zbehy, Slovakia, owned a steam sawmill in Jaklovce, near Margecany, Slovakia.〔Vrba (2002), p. 445; (''The Daily Telegraph'' (12 April 2006) ).〕 Because he was a Jew, Vrba was excluded at age 15 from the gymnasium (high school) in Bratislava, and went to work as a labourer. There were restrictions in Slovakia on Jews' education, housing and travel, and they were required to wear a yellow badge. Available jobs went first to non-Jews.〔 In 1942 the Slovak authorities announced that Jews were to be sent to "reservations" in Poland, starting with the young men. Then aged 17, Vrba decided instead to join the Czechoslovak Army in England. At the Hungarian border the guards handed him back to the Slovak authorities, who in turn sent him to the Nováky transition camp, a holding camp for Jews awaiting deportation. He managed to escape briefly, but was caught by a policeman who, Vrba wrote, became suspicious when he saw that Vrba was wearing two pairs of socks.〔Vrba (2002), pp. 15–17, 23–28, 38.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rudolf Vrba」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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