Winner of the National Jewish Book Award · New York Times Bestseller "A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information — and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?"  —  Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of  Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind  and  Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow A complex hero. A forgotten story. The first witness to reveal the full truth of the Holocaust . . . Award-winning journalist and bestselling novelist Jonathan Freedland tells the astonishing true story of Rudolf Vrba, the man who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of a truth too few were willing to hear. In April 1944, Rudolf Vrba became one of the very first Jews to escape from Auschwitz and make his way to freedom—among only a tiny handful who ever pulled off that near-impossible feat. He did it to reveal the truth of the death camp to the world—and to warn the last Jews of Europe what fate awaited them. Against all odds, Vrba and his fellow escapee, Fred Wetzler, climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and narrowly missed German bullets until they had smuggled out the first full account of Auschwitz the world had ever seen—a forensically detailed report that eventually reached Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and the Pope. And yet too few heeded the warning that Vrba had risked everything to deliver. Though Vrba helped save two hundred thousand Jewish lives, he never stopped believing it could have been so many more. This is the story of a brilliant yet troubled man—a gifted “escape artist” who, even as a teenager, understood that the difference between truth and lies can be the difference between life and death. Rudolf Vrba deserves to take his place alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler, and Primo Levi as one of the handful of individuals whose stories define our understanding of the Holocaust. "If you think you know everything you need to know about the Holocaust, Jonathan Freedland's immersive, shattering, and, ultimately redemptive book, will come as a revelation. It's an epic of terror and endurance, personified by the history of a man who, in the deepest pit of hell, grasped that the greatest weapon that could be used against the Nazi Final Solution was the escape, not just of himself, but the truth. Written with Freedland's page-turning, gripping, hard-edged immediacy,  The Escape Artist  is profound in thought, boundless in humanity, an immediate modern classic in the literature of the ultimate atrocity." - Sir Simon Schama "This is an indispensable, unflinching, bone-hard book. At one level the story of an audacious break-out, at another it tells of the inhuman methodology of the concentration camp as meticulously documented by a prisoner who had no time for rhetoric or sentimentality but who–tragically–found it harder to get the world to believe what he saw in Auschwitz than it was to escape from it. Compelling reading." - Howard Jacobson, author of the Man Booker Prize winning The Finkler Question "A brilliant and heart-wrenching book, with universal and timely lessons about the power of information - and misinformation. Is it possible to stop mass murder by telling the truth?" - Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow "A powerful story of one man’s resilience in the face of extreme evil and the price we pay when indifference rules our response." - Rosemary Sullivan, bestselling author of Stalin’s Daughter and The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation “A thrilling read, a piece of redemptive storytelling and a work of important Holocaust historical research ... a book that I couldn’t put down.” - Simon Sebag Montefiore “I thought I knew the Auschwitz story, but Freedland retells it from a fresh angle so powerfully that I read it with my heart beating fast, full of horror, rage, despair – and admiration for this potent demonstration of the stubborn resilience of the human spirit.”  - Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of The Girl with the Pearl Earring “Riveting . . . .  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—ranging from lack of interest to outright antisemitism—are nearly as horrifying. . . . The next time an abyss yawns before us—whether it be in Kyiv or in Washington, D.C.—we owe it to them to stare into it." - New York Times “Compelling and vivid . . . . With painstaking detail, [Freedland] 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.” - The Forward "A study of humanity like no other and an unforgettable read." - Anthony Horowitz, bestse