2-611-821 - Keystone Archives/Heritage Images

Dr Vrba displays his Auschwitz prison number, c1940s(?). Rudolf Vrba (1924-2006) was a Slovak Jew imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. In April 1944 he and another prisoner, Alfred Wetzler, escaped and informed Slovak Jewish officials about the mass exterminations taking place at the camp, information that was then passed on to the Allies. Subsequent pressure from world leaders persuaded Hungarian regent Miklos Horthy to halt the mass deportation of his country's Jewish population to the Nazi extermination camps, although not before 475,000 had already been transported.