True Life Auschwitz Breakout Story THE ESCAPE ARTIST Being Developed as a Limited Series
Jonathan Freedland’s non-fiction novel The Escape Artist, which tells the true story of two Jews who escaped from Auschwitz, is being developed as a high-end limited series. The screenwriter behind Silk and Your Honor, Peter Moffat, is adapting the script.
The Escape Artist “centers around nineteen-year-old Rudolf Vrba, a Slovakian Jew who manages to escape Auschwitz alongside fellow internee Fred Wetzler, and warn the world about what was happening. Their actions saved the lives of at least 200,000 Jews who were facing immediate deportation from Budapest to the world’s most notorious death camp.”
Freedland said in a statement: “This is a story of how human beings can be pushed to the outer limits, and yet still somehow endure. How the actions of one individual, even a teenage boy, can bend the arc of history.”
Moffat added: “Jonathan Freedland’s conclusion that Rudolf Vrba deserves to ‘stand alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler and Primo Levi in the first rank of stories that define the Shoah,’ is hard to argue with. It’s a great privilege to be asked to adapt this profoundly moving work.”
Producer Margery Bone said: “We are thrilled to be working again with the immense talent that is Peter Moffat on this unique and important story. To bring Jonathan Freedland’s brilliant and meticulously researched book to the screen is an honour for all of us.”
This is an incredible story and I’m happy to see that it’s finally going to be adapted as a series. I thought one day the story would be told in a film, but a series will be even better as it will be able to get more of the details of the story.
Here’s the description of the book:
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.
Source: Variety