Rudolf Vrba (1925-2006)

The escape of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler from the Auschwitz concentration camp 62 years ago today was extraordinary enough. Such events were all too rare and escapees almost always were rounded up and sent to their deaths ahead of schedule.

But Vrba (pronounced VER-ba), who died at his home in British Columbia on March 27, was different in another respect.

After fleeing to Zilina in northern Slovakia, he met with Jewish leaders to put together on what became known as the Auschwitz Protocol, a detailed report with diagrams of gas chambers and crematories that when released finally forced the U.S. and other governments to begin to face up to the horrors of Hitler's Final Solution.

Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg in Czechoslovakia, but changed his name after joining the Czech resistance. After the war, he went on to become a distinguished medical researcher in Israel, England, the U.S. and finally Canada.

He once told an interviewer that

The strength of the Final Solution was its secrecy, its impossibility. I escaped to break that belief that it was not possible. And to stop more killing.

Vrba succeeded in the former, but sadly not in the latter.

He was 81.