Customer Reviews

I Cannot forgive (AKA I Escaped from Auschwitz)

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I read this book when I was a teenager in the sixties. It was my education in the Holocaust and the concentration camps of WWII Europe. The book made such an impact on me, I remember the title to this day. It's a story of courage and determination, and it's a wonderful example of the strength of the human spirit. It should be required reading.

This book is undoubtably one of the best written books on the Holocaust and stands together with such masterpieces as Olga Lengyel's 'Five Chimneys' and Alicia Appleman-Jurman's 'Alicia, my story'. Vrba writes in a plain, informative, no holds barred fashion and describes in intense detail his escape from Slovakia to Hungary, the time at Novacky Camp in Slovakia and ultimately the time he spent in Auschwitz. His escape from Auschwitz together with Fred Wetzler is nothing short of a miracle. This book seems to have been forgotten and does not appear on the shelves in bookshops these days and it really should as one of the best testimonies from the era.

Although a testimonial full of unbearable, vivid horror and suffering, it isn't this that makes Vber's book so gripping, and so important. What endures is his robust personality, his unbelievable physical tenacity, and, incredibly enough, his sense of humour. In short, his character. Life in the camps was capricious enough, but this book slaps you with the fact that only those with a great and unshakable optimism had any chance at all. And moral people? Forget it. Dead within hours. The survivors had to tread on bodies to stay afloat. Talk about natural selection.