Alfred Wetzler

Alfred Wetzler was a Slovak Jewish prisoner who, along with Rudolf Vrba, escaped from the Auschwitz extermination camp on April 7, 1944. Their escape was meticulously planned, and they hid in a woodpile before fleeing the camp. After an 11-day journey, they reached Žilina, Slovakia, where they met with Jewish leaders.12

Together with Slovak Jewish resistance forces, Wetzler and Vrba compiled the Vrba-Wetzler Report. This detailed account described the mass murder process at Auschwitz-Birkenau, including maps and descriptions of the gas chambers. It estimated that 1.75 million Jews had been murdered there since June 1942. The report was anonymously published in Switzerland in the summer of 1944 and was later used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. The Vrba-Wetzler Report is credited with raising international awareness of the Holocaust and is considered a critical document in understanding the scale and methods of Nazi atrocities.12