Logo for Rudolf Vrba Papers, 1934-2008 | Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

Rudolf Vrba Papers, 1934-2008 | Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

Collection Overview

Title: Rudolf Vrba Papers, 1934-2008Add to your cart.

Primary Creator: Vrba, Rudolf

Extent: 46.03 Cubic Feet

Arrangement: The papers are arranged into sevem series, as follows: Holocaust, Academic, Personal, Photographs, Audiovisual Materials, Memorabilia and Printed Materials, Foreign Language Materials. Most foreign language materials are grouped together in a series, but a small amount remains foldered along with clearly related materials according to original order of the documents as received by the Library.

Abstract

This collection details the personal, professional, scholarly, and humanitarian life of Auschwitz escapee and co-author of the Vrba-Wetzler Report, Rudolf Vrba. Dr. Vrba is credited with being among the first witnesses to report the nature, methods, and scale of mass extermination performed by the Nazis. The Papers largely pertain to Dr. Vrba’s life and work following his emigration from Eastern Europe, including his biochemistry and pharmacology research career and efforts in support of Holocaust remembrance.

Scope and Contents of the Materials

The Rudolf Vrba Papers primarily reflect Vrba’s personal and academic life after emigrating from Eastern Europe. The papers include documentation of his role and interest in Holocaust remembrance, his published autobiography, and various lectures and public appearances. There is also a great deal of material unrelated to Holocaust legacy, including family correspondence, family photographs, professional activities, and other general material useful for biographical study. Most contents date between 1980 and 2006, with very little pre-dating the 1960s.

The majority of this collection takes the form of correspondence and printed materials, though photographs, memorabilia, audio-visual materials. The collection also contains numerous items in languages other than English including: German, French, Russian, Hebrew, Czech, Hungarian and others.

Collection Historical Note

Rudolf Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg in Topolčany, Czechoslovakia in 1924. After his escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944, the Slovakian Jewish underground provided him with new identity papers, with the name “Rudolf Vrba.”  This new identity was in order to protect him and his family against future arrest. He legalized the name immediately after the war.

At the age of 15, Vrba was excluded from gymnasium (secondary school) in Bratislava under Slovakia’s version of the Nuremberg Laws, known as the Jewish Code. In 1942, he was arrested and deported first to the concentration camp Majdanek and later to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). While at Auschwitz, Vrba was given prisoner identification number “44070.” Vrba first worked at the Aufraumungskommando. His job included meeting the newly arrived deportees at the railroad ramp, collecting their property and sorting it in huge storage areas.  These storage areas were ironically named Kanada (the land of plenty). From this position, Vrba was able to observe the trainloads of people, their country of origin, the dates of their arrival and the number of people in each transport.

Later Vrba was appointed registrar in the quarantine camp for men, in section B-II-a, a position where his opportunity to collect information improved. Those who were selected for slave-labor were first brought to the quarantine camp.  As registrar Vrba was able to collect additional information and he was thus able to double-check his previous estimates.

On the 7th of April 1944, Vrba and another Slovak Jew, Alfred Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz. They decided to go to Slovakia since there they had the best chance to go unnoticed because they were native Slovak speakers, were familiar with the local customs and hoped to utilize their contacts. Immediately after their arrival, they contacted the remnants of the Jewish community and informed them about the terrible realities of Auschwitz. Together they produced a detailed report, which came to be known as the “Vrba-Wetzler Report.” This account is credited with being among the first authoritative and detailed reports which informed the U.S. War Refugee Board, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Pope Pius XII about the methods, scale, and human cost of the Holocaust. It was endorsed by the US Government as true, and later used as evidence at the Nuremburg Trials.

Following dissemination of the Vrba-Wetzler Report, Vrba participated in the Slovak National Uprising and served in the partisan unit of Captain Milan Uher, where he stayed until the end of the war. For his heroic actions, he was awarded the Czechoslovak Medal for Bravery, Order of Slovak National Insurrection (Class 2) and the Medal of Honor of Czechoslovak Partisans. In 1945, Vrba moved to Prague where he earned a doctorate in biochemistry fromPrague Technical University and began working as a neurochemist. In 1958, he moved to Israel and worked at Weitzman Institute in Rehovot. In 1960 Vrba moved to London and became a citizen of the United Kingdom in 1966. In 1967 Vrba relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia and became a Canadian citizen in 1973. From 1973 - 1975, Dr Vrba worked at Harvard Medical School with a grant from the Medical Research Council of Canada. From 1976 until his retirement in 1990, Dr. Vrba served as a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of British Columbia. He wrote and lectured prolifically, retiring as a leader in the field of biochemistry and pharmacology.

Dr. Rudolf Vrba remained active in his defiance of Nazism until his death in 2006. He authored in 1963, with Alan Bestic, memoirs entitled I Cannot Forgive, later re-titled I Escaped from Auschwitz and 44070: The Conspiracy of the Twentieth Century.

This autobiography has since been published in numerous languages in over fifteen editions. Vrba regularly lectured at Holocaust conferences and events, and made himself available for interviews; additionally he contributed to several film documentaries and had several publications in historical journals. Finally, Vrba acted as a prosecution witness against Nazi criminals and Holocaust deniers in several court cases.

Dr. Rudolf Vrba passed away in 2006 at the age of 81.

Administrative Information

Repository: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum

Access Restrictions:

This collection contains some material of a personal nature which is closed to researchers at this time.

This collection contains an unprocessed series of foreign language material that is closed to researchers until such time as the contents can be processed and released.

Use Restrictions: This collection contains some material which is under copyright by various parties, and may not be used without permission of the copyright holder.

Related Materials:

Within the Records of the War Refugee Board are English language translations of the documents known collectively as the Auschwitz Protocols:

War Refugee Board press release of November 26, 1944

The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oswiecim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia [The Vrba - Wetzler Report]

Death Camp at Oswiecim

Transport - The Polish Major's Report

Additional archival material related to the Holocaust can be found in several other collections held by the FDR Library, including the Records of the War Refugee Board, FDR’s Papers as President, the Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, the Henry Morgenthau Jr. Papers, and several others. A curated subject collection called the Selected Documents Related to the Holocaust and Refugees draws on documents housed across these collections at the FDR Library, and is available for research both online and in the Library’s research room.

Processing Information: The collection was donated to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York by Robin Vrba in 2010. Archivist Sarah Malcolm, Field Study Intern William Villano, Archives Specialist William Baehr, Archives Volunteer Linda Mattis, and Visiting Scholar Nikola Zimring arranged and described the materials. Some duplicate materials, empty envelopes, and corrosive fasteners or containers were routinely disposed of during processing.

Box and Folder Listing


Browse by Series:

[Series 1: Holocaust],
[Series 2: Academic],
[Series 3: Personal],
[Series 4: Photographs],
[Series 5: Audiovisual Materials],
[Series 6: Memorabilia and Printed Materials],
[Series 7: Foreign Language Materials],
[All]


Series 6: Memorabilia and Printed MaterialsAdd to your cart.
(Containers 52-56) This series contains framed certificates, medals, and other distinguised honors awarded to Dr. Vrba, along with miscellaneus ephemera.

Browse by Series:

[Series 1: Holocaust],
[Series 2: Academic],
[Series 3: Personal],
[Series 4: Photographs],
[Series 5: Audiovisual Materials],
[Series 6: Memorabilia and Printed Materials],
[Series 7: Foreign Language Materials],
[All]