The gripping memoir I Escaped From Auschwitz, by Rudolph Vrba is being brought to the big screen. The story follows the author’s harrowing experience in WWII, detailing his capture, and escape from the infamous concentration camp at Auschwitz. The movie is being produced by Ben Shields Catlin, along with Black List screenwriters Evan Parter and Paul Hilborn.
Deadline provides the following synopsis:
In 1942, Vrba was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 18 from his hometown in Slovakia. He became connected to the underground resistance within the camp where he and his friend Fred Wetzler devised an ingenious escape plan. In the Spring of 1944, they broke out of the prison, just as the Nazi’s Final Solution was heading into its deadliest months. Once free, Vrba and Wetzler set off an epic manhunt for them through nearly 100 miles of treacherous Nazi territory, being tracked by SS search parties desperate to hunt them down. After multiple close calls, they made it back home to Slovakia where they would write the first eyewitness accounts of the death camps. The Vrba-Wetzler Report found its way to FDR, Churchill, the Pope, and finally, to the front page of the New York Times, where it exposed the truth of the Final Solution to the world. In the end, Rudi’s escape and thorough account of the horrors of Auschwitz helped to save hundreds of thousands of lives.
The novel was originally released n 1963 as I Cannot Forgive, and has since gone out of print. The memoir will be re-released later this month via Skyhorse Publishing. This sounds like an incredible first hand account that is important for us all to read and see.