Jonny Gould’s Jewish State circles back to a previous episode, uncovering startling new revelations. New details so rich, a bestseller has been updated to include them.
In episode 88, I sat down with my old friend, Jonathan Freedland to discuss The Escape Artist, the story of two young Jewish men who broke out of Auschwitz to warn the world of the horrors within. Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler’s 32-page report reached the desks of Roosevelt, Churchill and the Pope and they warned Hungary’s Admiral Horthy to stop the deportation of his country’s Jews to Auschwitz - or they’d make him a war criminal.
On receiving this, Horthy panicked and stopped turning a blind eye to the death trains leaving from across Hungary. 200,000 Jewish lives were spared because of Vrba and Wetzler’s actions.
Dr. Bea Lewkowicz is a fellow member of my synagogue and one Shabbat morning, she told me that rather uniquely, she knew both Rudi and Alfred, who was her own Uncle Freddo.
But the contrasting post war fortunes of the two men was stark. Rudi lived a metropolitan academic’s life in Vancouver, but Fred was trapped behind the iron curtain in Czechoslovakia, constrained and ostracised by the repressive communist regime.
Bea is director of the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive of the Association of Jewish Refugees, where she creates and archives holocaust testimonies. She’s also a director of Sephardi Voices UK. So for the first time in the series, I’m more than delighted to hand over the interview microphone to Jonathan, in conversation with Bea.
If you’ve read The Escape Artist and invested in their remarkable story, you’ll love this. If you haven’t, this is a great place to start.
Jonny Gould’s Jewish State is proudly supported by Dangoor Education.
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98: Winston Marshall: Mumford's Wise Son
97: Jonny in Abu Dhabi: Amjad Taha, "The Abraham Accords is the miracle in the Middle East"
96: Jonny in Abu Dhabi: Loay Alshareef, “Jews and Muslims destined to come together”
95: Fleur Hassan-Nahoum: Jerusalem, Israeli law and order, Abraham Accords, Qatar and me
94: "I met the Ayatollah when I lived in Iran. He asked me to write his memoirs. I'm Jewish". Catherine Perez-Shakdam
93: Israel-Lebanon maritime border dispute and Iran protests: Edy Cohen’s verdict
92: Jason Greenblatt: will Biden unmake Trump’s Middle East peace? In the Path of Abraham
91: Queen Elizabeth II: Jewish community pays tribute to Her Majesty and what the future may hold
90: Hillel Neuer: “The Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt want MORE, not less Israel”
89: Julie Burchill: "Without Jewish people, we'd all be sitting in caves grunting"
88: Jonathan Freedland: The Escape Artist, Rudolf Vrba. The teenage Jew who escaped Auschwitz
87: Ukraine: Kharkiv's Jews humanitarian crisis: Rabbi Mendel Moskowitz
86: Douglas Murray: The War On The West: how to prevail in the age of unreason
85: Ron Dermer and Ed Husain: The first steps on the road to the Abraham Accords
84: Len Khodorkovsky: from Ukrainian refugee to the US State Department, an American story
83: National Jewish Assembly: Anglo Jewry's new leadership organization
82: Israel Bonds, Invest in Israel: Arnon Perlman's life in public service
81: Finding Abraham: Malcolm Green's Abraham Accords-inspired tour through Israel
80: The Imam of Peace, Mohammad Tawhidi: Without Israel, Islam “loses a fundamental pillar”
79: Edy Cohen: Israel’s supreme leader in Arabic
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