Raw and gripping ... Mr. Freedland’s compelling portrait of this neglected hero of Holocaust resistance leaves an inescapable imprint of a past now in danger of being minimized or forgotten.
Riveting ... Freedland...reveals many of the details of the escape in the book’s prologue. The real suspense begins afterward: not just the journey home...but what happened after they arrived ... The Escape Artist includes harrowing details about Auschwitz that still have the power to shock. But the reactions to Vrba’s testimony by those in power...are nearly as horrifying.
Compelling ... We know about Auschwitz. We know what happened there. But Freedland, with his strong, clear prose and vivid details, makes us feel it, and the first half of this book is not an easy read. The chillingly efficient mass murder of thousands of people is harrowing enough, but Freedland tells us stories of individual evils as well that are almost harder to take ... His matter-of-fact tone makes it bearable for us to continue to read ... The Escape Artist is riveting history, eloquently written and scrupulously researched. Rosenberg's brilliance, courage and fortitude are nothing short of amazing.
Freedland’s superb writing simultaneously explores these questions and fills the reader with rage, despair, and admiration for the stubborn resistance of the human spirit. It is heart-wrenching to read the story ... Rich in detail, Freedland generates suspense as early as the first paragraph ... He is both an award-winning journalist and a bestselling novelist, which allows him to blend style and substance into accessible, breathtaking prose ... Holocaust history has long honored its heroes. Now, with this new story of a complex, formerly hidden hero, Rudolf Vrba can take his well-deserved place in public memory.
Much of this is interesting, but at the heart of The Escape Artist is an utterly gripping narrative, incorporating a restrained though harrowing picture of life in Auschwitz and a kind of heroic adventure story.
Drawing on Vrba’s memoirs, and on conversations with his first wife and his widow, Jonathan Freedland has put together both the story of Vrba’s two years in Auschwitz and – perhaps most interestingly – the long saga of the aftermath of his escape. It is written almost as fiction and moves at a great pace ... Jonathan Freedland has produced a painstaking and very readable reconstruction of Vrba’s increasingly frantic attempts to convince a world of facts it did not want to hear. It is a valuable, if depressing, reminder, at a time when veracity is everywhere under threat, of the fragility of the truth.
Freedland’s excellent book opens in the most thrilling way imaginable ... Freedland’s book is rich in the kind of details that haunt you long after you have turned the last page ... Thanks to Freedland’s impeccable research and immersive storytelling, he has the biography that he deserves.
Freedland enthusiastically makes his informal retelling of this story of a daring escape from a horror on an unimaginable scale a particular tale of high adventure.
Historically significant and riveting ... The brutality and inhumanity of Nazis at every level is chilling and can make for difficult reading. At the same time, Freedland’s depth of research gives a more complete picture of Auschwitz ... Vivid.
Freedland...is the perfect person to tell Rosenberg’s story: he’s got a journalist’s eye for precise detail and a novelist’s sense of pacing and suspense ... This spellbinding book tells the kind of true story that, if it were the basis of a work of fiction, might be considered unbelievable.
There are two minor weaknesses in Freedland’s otherwise compelling and vivid account. First, Freedland skates over Vrba’s falling out with Wetzler. Given the intimate relationship of their camp existence, escape and tour to spur the Jews and Allies to action, their subsequent estrangement feels abrupt and calls out for a more detailed explanation ... As Freedland follows Vrba’s descent into hell and his epic journey from the abyss to deliver the truth, he takes no shortcuts, leading us through the most harrowing era of modern human history and the traumatic disappointments that follow it. With painstaking detail, he uncovers the humanity in one of the Shoah’s great witnesses but also brings Vrba’s truth about Nazi inhumanity to a new audience in a riveting, accessible way. It’s a weighty but sharp tale that should become one of the most stunning texts on required high school reading lists of the future.
First-rate ... Concentration camp stories make for painful reading, but British journalist and broadcaster Freedland relates a riveting tale with a fascinating protagonist ... Gripping ... Freedland smoothly recounts Vrba’s long, often troubled postwar life, during which he persistently criticized Jewish and Israeli leaders who could have resisted the genocide more than they did. A powerful story of a true hero who deserves more recognition.
Harrowing ... Drawing on interviews with family members and former colleagues, Freedland presents a warts-and-all portrait of Vrba, and vividly captures the horrors of Auschwitz. The result is a noteworthy contribution to the history of the Holocaust.
