Two prisoners at the extermination camp make a perilous bid for freedom in an intense, disturbing
Holocaust story based on real events
In 1944, two Jewish Slovaks, Rudolf Vrba (Peter Ondrejička) and Alfred Wetzler (Noel Czuczor), both of them prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, hide in some wooden pallets and wait for a moment to escape. Carrying documents that will prove what is really happening in the extermination camp, they manage to make it through the fence and into the forest, an escape that precious few managed. Meanwhile, those who stayed behind, some of whom risked their lives to help Vrba and Wetzler escape, are cruelly punished by the camp guards.
This dramatised account of a true story plays like a grim high-stakes thriller as we root for the two men to make it over the border. Their names may be unfamiliar, but even for those who know about the Auschwitz Protocols – a report to which the pair contributed that has a weighty legacy in Holocaust history – the film is still intensely impactful. Inevitably, it is profoundly upsetting and disturbing.