Rudolf Vrba, the first man to give the world an eyewitness account of the mass murder at the Auschwitz concentration camp when he escaped from there in 1944, testified today at the trial of 22 Auschwitz guards charged with war crimes, Mr. Vrba, a Czech Jew who was born Walter Rosenberg, corroborated the testimony by Auschwitz experts during the 11-month trial that up to 25,000 victims were gassed daily during the peak operation of the death camp.
His report on the camp in 1944 was brought to the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Pope Pius XII and was used in an attempt to warn the Jews of Hungary what was in store for them at the hands of Adolf Eichmann.
Mr. Vrba, who is now a biochemist in England, was sent to Auschwitz at the age of 17 in 1942, and worked there as a slave laborer handling the baggage of newly arrived prisoners. After months of watching untold thousands of Jews sent to their deaths, Mr. Vrba and another man made one of the few successful escapes from Auschwitz and reached Czechoslovakia. There he met with the Papal Nuncio and drew up his report of Nazi atrocities in Auschwitz which convinced the Allies that Hitler meant to carry out his threats of murdering world Jewry.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
