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The first full English translation of the report was published in November 1944 by the United States War Refugee Board. The publication of parts of the report in June 1944 is credited with helping to persuade the Hungarian regent, Miklós Horthy, to halt the deportation of that country's Jews to Auschwitz, which had been proceeding at a rate of 12,000 a day since May 1944. The Vrba–Wetzler report was an early attempt to estimate the numbers and the most detailed description of the gas chambers to that point. The Allies had known since November 1942 that Jews were being killed en masse in Auschwitz. Oscar Krasniansky of the Slovak Jewish Council typed up the report and simultaneously translated it into German. Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, two Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz on 10 April 1944, wrote the report by hand or dictated it, in Slovak, between 25 and 27 April, in Žilina, Slovakia. It is a 33-page eye-witness account of the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust.
The Vrba–Wetzler report is one of three documents that comprise what is known as the Auschwitz Protocols, otherwise known as the Auschwitz Report or the Auschwitz notebook. The report prompted an end to the mass deportation of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz, saving around 200,000 lives.
Sketch from the report: left, Auschwitz I showing the DAW, Siemens and Krupp factories right, Auschwitz II showing four gas chambers and crematoria.Ĭomposed in Žilina, Slovakia, 25 April 1944Īuschwitz Protocols, Auschwitz Report, Auschwitz notebook