title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The new arrivals' property was taken to barracks known as "Effektenlager I and II" in Auschwitz I (moved to Auschwitz II after Vrba's escape). Inmates, and apparently also some of the camp administration, called the barracks Kanada I and II because they were a "land of plenty". Everything was there—medicine, food, clothing, and cash—much of it repackaged by the "Aufräumungskommando" to be sent to Germany. The "Aufräumungskommando" lived in Auschwitz I, block 4, until 15 January 1943 when they were transferred to block 16 in Auschwitz II, sector Ib, where Vrba lived until June 1943.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: After Vrba had been in Auschwitz for about five months, he fell sick with typhus; his weight dropped to and he was delirious. At his lowest point, he was helped by Josef Farber, a Slovakian member of the camp resistance, who brought him medication and thereafter extended to him the protection of the Auschwitz underground.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In early 1943 Vrba was given the job of assistant registrar in one of the blocks; he told Lanzmann that the resistance movement had manoeuvered him into the position because it gave him access to information. A few weeks later, in June, he was made registrar ("Blockschreiber") of block 10 in Auschwitz II, the quarantine section for men (BIIa), again because of the underground. The position gave him his own room and bed, and he could wear his own clothes. He was also able to speak to new arrivals who had been selected to work, and he had to write reports about the registration process, which allowed him to ask questions and take notes.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: From his room in BIIa, Vrba said he could see the trucks drive toward the gas chambers. In his estimate, 10 percent of each transport was selected to work and the rest murdered. During his time on the "Judenrampe" from 18 August 1942 to 7 June 1943, he told Lanzmann in 1978, he had seen at least 200 trains arrive, each containing 1,000–5,000 people. In a 1998 paper, he wrote that he had witnessed 100–300 trains arrive, each locomotive pulling 20–40 freight cars and sometimes 50–60. He calculated that, between the spring of 1942 and 15 January 1944, 1.5 million had been murdered. According to the Vrba–Wetzler report, 1,765,000 were murdered in Auschwitz between April 1942 and April 1944. In 1961 Vrba swore in an affidavit for the trial of Adolf Eichmann that he believed 2.5 million had been murdered overall in the camp, plus or minus 10 percent.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba's estimates are higher than those of Holocaust historians but in line with estimates from SS officers and Auschwitz survivors, including members of the "Sonderkommando". Early estimates ranged from one to 6.5 million. Rudolf Höss, the first Auschwitz commandant, said in 1946 that three million had been murdered in the camp, although he revised his view. In 1946 the Main Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland estimated four million. Later scholarly estimates were lower. According to Polish historian Franciszek Piper, writing in 2000, most historians place the figure at one to 1.5 million. His own widely accepted estimate was that at least 1.3 million were sent to Auschwitz and at least 1,082,000 died (rounded up to 1.1 million or 85 percent), including 960,000 Jews. Piper's estimate of the death toll for April 1942 to April 1944 was 450,000, against Vrba's 1,765,000.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: According to Vrba, a kapo from Berlin by the name of Yup told him on 15 January 1944 that he was part of a group of prisoners building a new railway line to lead straight to the crematoria. Yup said he had overheard from an SS officer that a million Hungarian Jews would soon arrive and that the old ramp could not handle the numbers. A railway line leading directly to the crematoria would cut thousands of truck journeys from the old ramp. In addition Vrba heard directly, courtesy of drunk SS guards, he wrote, that they would soon have Hungarian salami. When Dutch Jews arrived, they brought cheese; likewise there were sardines from the French Jews, and halva and olives from the Greeks. Now it was Hungarian salami.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba had been thinking of escaping for two years but, he wrote, he was now determined, hoping to "undermine one of the principle foundations—the secrecy of the operation". A Russian captain, Dmitri Volkkov, told him he would need Russian tobacco soaked in petrol, then dried, to fool the dogs; a watch to use as a compass; matches to make food; and salt for nutrition. Vrba began studying the layout of the camps. Both Auschwitz I and II consisted of inner camps where the prisoners slept, surrounded by a six-yard-wide trench of water, then high-voltage barbed-wire fences. The area was lit at night and guarded by the SS in watchtowers. When a prisoner was reported missing, the guards searched for three days and nights. The key to a successful escape would be to remain hidden just outside the inner perimeter until the search was called off.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: His first escape was planned for 26 January 1944 with Charles Unglick, a French Army captain, but the rendezvous did not work out; Unglick tried to escape alone and was killed. The SS left his body on display for two days, seated on a stool. An earlier group of escapees had been killed and mutilated with dumdum bullets, then placed in the middle of Camp D with a sign reading "We're back!"


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: On 6 March 1944 Vrba heard that the Czech family camp was about to be sent to the gas chambers. The group of around 5,000, including women and children, had arrived in Auschwitz in September 1943 from the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia (the Czech Republic since 1993). That they had been allowed to live in Auschwitz for six months was unusual, not least because women with children were usually murdered immediately. Correspondence found after the war between Adolf Eichmann's office and the International Red Cross suggested that the Germans had set up the family camp as a model for a planned Red Cross visit to Auschwitz. The group was housed in relatively good conditions in block BIIb near the main gate, although in the six months they were held there 1,000 died despite the better treatment. They did not have their heads shaved, and the children were given lessons and access to better food, including milk and white bread.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: On 1 March, according to the Vrba–Wetzler report (5 March, according to Danuta Czech), the group was asked to write postcards to their relatives, telling them they were well and asking for parcels of provisions, and to postdate the cards to 25–27 March. On 7 March, according to the report (8–9 March, according to Czech), the group of 3,791 was gassed. The report stated that 11 twins had been kept alive for medical experiments. On 20 December 1943, a second Czech family group of 3,000 arrived, according to the report (2,473, according to Czech). Vrba assumed that this group would also be murdered after six months, i.e. around 20 June 1944.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba resolved again to escape. In Auschwitz he had encountered an acquaintance from Trnava, Alfréd Wetzler (prisoner no. 29162, then aged 26) who had arrived on 13 April 1942 and was working in the mortuary. Czesław Mordowicz, who escaped from Auschwitz weeks after Vrba, said decades later that it was Wetzler who had initiated and planned the escape.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: According to Wetzler, writing in his book "Čo Dante nevidel" (1963), later published as "Escape from Hell" (2007), the camp underground had organized the escape, supplying information for Vrba and Wetzler to carry ("Karol" and "Val" in the book). "Otta" in Hut 18, a locksmith, had created a key for a small shed in which Vrba and others had drawn a site plan and dyed clothes. "Fero" from the central registry supplied data from the registry; "Filipek" (Filip Müller) in Hut 13 added the names of the SS officers working around the crematoria, a plan of the gas chambers and crematoria, his records of the transports gassed in crematoria IV and V, and the label of a Zyklon B canister. "Edek" in Hut 14 smuggled out clothes for the escapees to wear, including suits from Amsterdam. "Adamek", "Bolek" and Vrba had supplied socks, underpants, shirts, a razor and a torch, as well as glucose, vitamins, margarine, cigarettes and a cigarette lighter that said "made in Auschwitz".


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The information about the camp, including a sketch of the crematorium produced by a Russian prisoner, "Wasyl", was hidden inside two metal tubes. The tube containing the sketch was lost during the escape; the second tube contained data about the transports. Vrba's account differs from Wetzel's; according to Vrba, they took no notes and wrote the Vrba–Wetzler report from memory. He told the historian John Conway that he had used "personal memotechnical methods" to remember the data, and that the stories about written notes had been invented because no one could explain his ability to recall so much detail.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Wearing suits, overcoats, and boots, at 14:00 on Friday, 7 April 1944—the eve of Passover—the men climbed inside a hollowed-out space they had prepared in a pile of wood stacked between Auschwitz-Birkenau's inner and outer perimeter fences, in section BIII in a construction area known as "Meksyk" ("Mexico"). They sprinkled the area with Russian tobacco soaked in gasoline, as advised by Dmitri Volkov, the Russian captain, to ward off dogs. Bolek and Adamek, both Polish prisoners, moved the planks back in place once they were hidden.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Kárný writes that at 20:33 on 7 April "SS-Sturmbannführer" Fritz Hartjenstein, the Birkenau commander, learned by teleprinter that two Jews were missing. On 8 April the Gestapo at Auschwitz sent telegrams with descriptions to the Reich Security Head Office in Berlin, the SS in Oranienburg, district commanders, and others. The men hid in the wood pile for three nights and throughout the fourth day. Soaking wet, with strips of flannel tightened across their mouths to muffle coughing, Wetzel wrote that they lay there counting: "[N]early eighty hours. Four thousand eight hundred minutes. Two hundred and eighty-eight thousand seconds." On Sunday morning, 9 April, Adamek urinated against the pile and whistled to signal that all was well. At 9 pm on 10 April, they crawled out of the wood pile. "Their circulation returns only slowly," Wetzel wrote. "They both have the sensation of ants running along in their veins, that their bodies have been transformed into big, very slowly warming ant-heaps. ... The onset of weakness is so fierce that they have to support themselves on the inner edges of the panels." Using a map they'd taken from "Kanada", the men headed south toward Slovakia away, walking parallel to the Soła river.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: According to Henryk Świebocki of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, local people, including members of the Polish underground who lived near the camp, did what they could to help escapees. Vrba wrote that there was no organized help for them on the outside. At first the men moved only at night, eating bread taken from Auschwitz and drinking from streams. On 13 April, lost in Bielsko-Biala, they approached a farmhouse and a Polish woman took them in for a day. Feeding them bread, potato soup and "ersatz" coffee, she explained that most of the area had been "Germanized" and that Poles helping Jews risked death.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: They continued following the river; every so often, a Polish woman would drop half a loaf of bread near them. They were shot at on 16 April by German gendarmes but escaped. Two other Poles helped them with food and a place to stay, until they finally crossed the Polish–Slovakian border near Skalité on 21 April 1944. By this time, Vrba's feet were so swollen he had had to cut off his boots and was wearing carpet slippers one of the Polish peasants had given him.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: A peasant family in Skalité took them in for a few days, fed and clothed them, then put them in touch with a Jewish doctor in nearby Čadca, Dr. Pollack. Vrba and Pollack had met in a transit camp in Nováky. Through a contact in the Slovak Jewish Council, Pollack arranged for them to send people from Bratislava to meet the men. Pollack was distressed to learn the probable fate of his parents and siblings, who had been deported from Slovakia to Auschwitz in 1942.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba and Wetzler spent the night in Čadca in the home of a relative of the rabbi Leo Baeck, before being taken to Žilina by train. They were met at the station by Erwin Steiner, a member of the Slovak Jewish Council (or Ústredňa Židov), and taken to the Jewish Old People's Home, where the council had offices. Over the following days, they were introduced to Ibolya Steiner, who was married to Erwin; Oskar Krasniansky, an engineer and stenographer (who later took the name Oskar Isaiah Karmiel); and, on 25 April, the chair of the council, Dr. Oskar Neumann, a lawyer.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The council was able to confirm who Vrba and Wetzler were from its deportation lists. In his memoir, Wetzler described (using pseudonyms) several people who attended the first meeting: a lawyer (presumably Neumann), a factory worker, a "Madame Ibi" (Ibolya Steiner) who had been a functionary in a progressive youth organization, and the Prague correspondent of a Swiss newspaper. Neumann told them the group had been waiting two years for someone to confirm the rumours they had heard about Auschwitz. Wetzler was surprised by the naïvete of his question: "Is it so difficult to get out [of] there?" The journalist wanted to know how they had managed it, if it was so hard. Wetzler felt Vrba lean forward angrily to say something, but he grabbed his hand and Vrba drew back.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Wetzler encouraged Vrba to start describing conditions in Auschwitz. "He wants to speak like a witness," Wetlzer wrote, "nothing but facts, but the terrible events sweep him along like a torrent, he relives them with his nerves, with every pore of his body, so that after an hour he is completely exhausted." The group, in particular the Swiss journalist, seemed to have difficulty understanding. The journalist wondered why the International Red Cross had not intervened. "The more [Vrba] reports, the angrier and more embittered he becomes." The journalist asked Vrba to tell them about "specific bestialities by the SS men". Vrba replied: "That is as if you wanted me to tell you of a specific day when there was water in the Danube."


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba described the ramp, selection, the "Sonderkommando", and the camps' internal organization; the building of Auschwitz III and how Jews were being used as slave labour for Krupp, Siemens, IG Farben, and DAW; and the gas chambers. Wetzler gave them the data from the central registry hidden in the remaining tube, and described the high death toll among Soviet POWs, the destruction of the Czech family camp, the medical experiments, and the names of doctors involved in them. He also handed over the label from the Zyklon B canister. Every word, he wrote, "has the effect of a blow on the head".


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Neumann said the men would be brought a typewriter in the morning, and the group would meet again in three days. Hearing this, Vrba exploded: "Easy for you to say 'in three days'! But back there they are flinging people into the fire at this moment and in three days they'll kill thousands. Do something immediately!" Wetzler pulled on his arm, but Vrba continued, pointing at each one: "You, you, you'll all finish up in the gas unless something is done! Do you hear?"


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The following day, Vrba began by sketching the layout of Auschwitz I and II, and the position of the ramp in relation to the camps. The report was rewritten several times over three days; according to Wetzler, on two of those days, he and Vrba wrote until daybreak. Wetzler wrote the first part, Vrba the third, and they worked on the second part together. Then they re-wrote it six times. Oskar Krasniansky translated it from Slovak into German as it was being written, with the help of Ibolya Steiner, who typed it up. The original Slovak version is lost. The report in Slovak and, it seems, in German was completed by Thursday, 27 April 1944.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: According to Kárný, the report describes the camp "with absolute accuracy", including its construction, installations, security, the prisoner number system, the categories of prisoner, the diet and accommodation, as well as the gassings, shootings and injections. It provides details known only to prisoners, including that discharge forms were filled out for prisoners who were gassed, indicating that death rates in the camp were falsified. Although presented by two men, it was clearly the product of many prisoners, including the "Sonderkommando" working in the gas chambers. It contains sketches of the gas chambers and states that there were four crematoria, each of which contained a gas chamber and furnace room. The report estimated the total capacity of the gas chambers to be 6,000 daily.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In a sworn deposition for the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, Vrba said that he and Wetzler had obtained the information about the gas chambers and crematoria from "Sonderkommando" Filip Müller and his colleagues who worked there. Müller confirmed this in his "Eyewitness Auschwitz" (1979). The Auschwitz scholar Robert Jan van Pelt wrote in 2002 that the description contains errors, but that given the circumstances, including the men's lack of architectural training, "one would become suspicious if it did not contain errors".


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The Jewish Council found an apartment for Vrba and Wetzler in Liptovský Svätý Mikuláš, Slovakia, where the men kept a copy of the Vrba–Wetzler report, in Slovak, hidden behind a picture of the Virgin Mary. They made clandestine copies with the help of a friend, Josef Weiss of the Bratislava Office for the Prevention of Venereal Disease, and handed them out to Jews in Slovakia with contacts in Hungary, for translation into Hungarian.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: According to the historian Zoltán Tibori Szabó, the report was first published in Geneva in May 1944, in German, by Abraham Silberschein of the World Jewish Congress as "Tatsachenbericht über Auschwitz und Birkenau", dated 17 May 1944. Florian Manoliu of the Romanian Legation in Bern took the report to Switzerland and gave it to George Mantello, a Jewish businessman from Transylvania, who was working as the first secretary of the El Salvador consulate in Geneva. It was thanks to Mantello that the report received, in the Swiss press, its first wide coverage.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Arnošt Rosin (prisoner no. 29858) and Czesław Mordowicz (prisoner no. 84216) escaped from Auschwitz on 27 May 1944 and arrived in Slovakia on 6 June, the day of the Normandy landings. Hearing about the invasion of Normandy and believing the war was over, they got drunk to celebrate, using dollars they had smuggled out of Auschwitz. They were arrested for violating the currency laws, and spent eight days in prison before the Jewish Council paid their fines.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Rosin and Mordowicz were interviewed, on 17 June, by Oskar Krasniansky, the engineer who had translated the Vrba–Wetzler report into German. They told him that, between 15 and 27 May 1944, 100,000 Hungarian Jews had arrived at Auschwitz II-Birkenau and that most had been murdered on arrival. Vrba concluded from this that the Hungarian Jewish Council had not informed its Jewish communities about the Vrba–Wetzler report. The seven-page Rosin-Mordowicz report was combined with the longer Vrba–Wetzler report and a third report, known as the Polish Major's report (written by Jerzy Tabeau, who had escaped from Auschwitz in November 1943), to become the Auschwitz Protocols.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: According to David Kranzler, Mantello asked the Swiss-Hungarian Students' League to make 50 mimeographed copies of the Vrba–Wetzler report and the two shorter Auschwitz reports, which by 23 June 1944 he had distributed to the Swiss government and Jewish groups. On or around 19 June Richard Lichtheim of the Jewish Agency in Geneva, who had received a copy of the report from Mantello, cabled the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem to say they knew "what has happened and where it has happened" and that 12,000 Jews were being deported from Budapest daily. He also reported the Vrba–Wetzler figure that 90 per cent of Jews arriving at Auschwitz II were being murdered.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The Swiss students made thousands of copies, which were passed to other students and MPs. At least 383 articles about Auschwitz appeared in the Swiss press between 23 June and 11 July 1944. According to Michael Fleming, this was more than the number of articles published about the Holocaust during the war by all the British popular newspapers combined.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The dates on which the report was distributed became a matter of importance within Holocaust historiography. According to Randolph L. Braham, Jewish leaders were slow to distribute the report, fearful of causing panic. Braham asks: "Why did the Jewish leaders in Hungary, Slovakia, Switzerland and elsewhere fail to distribute and publicize the Auschwitz Reports immediately after they had received copies in late April or early May 1944?" Vrba alleged that lives were lost because of this. In particular he blamed Rudolf Kastner of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee. The committee had organized safe passage for Jews into Hungary before the German invasion. The Slovakian Jewish Council handed Kastner the report at the end of April or by 3 May 1944 at the latest.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Reverend József Éliás, head of the Good Shepherd Mission in Hungary, said he received the report from Géza Soós, a member of the Hungarian Independence Movement, a resistance group. Yehuda Bauer believes that Kastner or Ottó Komoly, leader of the Aid and Rescue Committee, gave Soós the report. Éliás's secretary, Mária Székely, translated it into Hungarian and prepared six copies, which made their way to Hungarian and church officials, including Miklós Horthy's daughter-in-law, Countess Ilona Edelsheim-Gyulai. Braham writes that this distribution occurred before 15 May.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Kastner's reasons for not distributing the report further are unknown. According to Braham, "Hungarian Jewish leaders were still busy translating and duplicating the Reports on June 14–16, and did not distribute them till the second half of June. [They] almost completely ignored the Reports in their postwar memoirs and statements." Vrba argued until the end of his life that Rudolf Kastner withheld the report in order not to jeopardize negotiations between the Aid and Rescue Committee and Adolf Eichmann, the SS officer in charge of the transport of Jews out of Hungary. As the Vrba–Wetzler report was being written, Eichmann had proposed to the Committee in Budapest that the SS trade up to one million Hungarian Jews for 10,000 trucks and other goods from the Western Allies. The proposal came to nothing, but Kastner collected donations to pay the SS to allow over 1,600 Jews to leave Budapest for Switzerland on what became known as the Kastner train. In Vrba's view, Kastner suppressed the report in order not to alienate the SS.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The Hungarian biologist George Klein worked as a secretary for the Hungarian Jewish Council in Síp Street, Budapest, when he was a teenager. In late May or early June 1944, his boss, Dr. Zoltán Kohn, showed him a carbon copy of the Vrba–Wetzler report in Hungarian and said he should tell only close family and friends. Klein had heard Jews mention the term "Vernichtungslager" (extermination camp), but it had seemed like a myth. "I immediately believed the report because it made sense," he wrote in 2011. " ... The dry, factual, nearly scientific language, the dates, the numbers, the maps and the logic of the narrative coalesced into a solid and inexorable structure." Klein told his uncle, who asked how Klein could believe such nonsense: "I and others in the building in Síp Street must have lost our minds under the pressure." It was the same with other relatives and friends: middle-aged men with property and family did not believe it, while the younger ones wanted to act. In October that year, when the time came for Klein to board a train to Auschwitz, he ran instead.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Details from the Vrba–Wetzler report began to appear elsewhere in the media. On 4 June 1944 the "New York Times" reported on the "cold-blooded murder" of Hungary's Jews. On 16 June the "Jewish Chronicle" in London ran a story by Isaac Gruenbaum of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem with the headline "Bomb death camps"; the writer had clearly seen the Vrba–Wetzler report. On the same date, in Germany, the BBC World Service reported the murder in March of the Czech family camp and the second Czech group the Vrba–Wetzler report said would be killed around 20 June. The broadcast alluded to the Vrba–Wetzler report:


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: A 22-line story on page five of the "New York Times", "Czechs report massacre", reported on 20 June that 7,000 Jews had been "dragged to gas chambers in the notorious German concentration camps at Birkenau and Oświęcim [Auschwitz]". Walter Garrett, the Swiss correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph, a British news agency, sent four dispatches to London on 24 June with details from the report received from George Mantello, including Vrba's estimate that 1,715,000 Jews had been murdered. As a result of his reporting, at least 383 articles about Auschwitz appeared over the following 18 days, including a 66-page report in Geneva, "Les camps d'extermination".


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: On 26 June the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that 100,000 Hungarian Jews had been executed in gas chambers in Auschwitz. The BBC repeated this on the same day but omitted the name of the camp. The following day, as a result of the information from Walter Garrett, the "Manchester Guardian" published two articles. The first said that Polish Jews were being gassed in Auschwitz and the second: "Information that the Germans systematically exterminating Hungarian Jews has lately become more substantial." The report mentioned the arrival "of many thousands of Jews ... at the concentration camp at Oswiecim". On 28 June the newspaper reported that 100,000 Hungarian Jews had been deported to Poland and gassed, but without mentioning Auschwitz.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Daniel Brigham, the "New York Times" correspondent in Geneva, published a story on 3 July, "Inquiry Confirms Nazi Death Camps", with the subtitle "1,715,000 Jews Said to Have Been Put to Death by the Germans up to April 15", and on 6 July a second, "Two Death Camps Places of Horror; German Establishments for Mass Killings of Jews Described by Swiss". According to Fleming, the BBC Home Service mentioned Auschwitz as an extermination camp for the first time on 7 July 1944. It said that over "four hundred thousand Hungarian Jews [had been] sent to the concentration camp at Oświęcim" and that most were murdered in gas chambers; it added that the camp was the largest concentration camp in Poland and that gas chambers had been installed in 1942 that could murder 6,000 people a day. Fleming writes that the report was the last of nine on the 9 pm news.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: At the request of the Slovakian Jewish Council, Vrba and Czesław Mordowicz (one of the 27 May escapees), along with a translator and Oskar Krasniasnky, met Vatican Swiss legate Monsignor Mario Martilotti at the Svätý Jur monastery on 20 June 1944. Martilotti had seen the report and questioned the men about it for five hours. Mordowicz was irritated by Vrba during this meeting. In an interview in the 1990s for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, he said Vrba, 19 at the time, had behaved cynically and childishly; at one point he appeared to mock the way Martilotti was cutting his cigar. Mordowicz feared that the behaviour would make their information less credible. To maintain Martilotti's attention, he told him that Catholics and priests were being murdered along with the Jews. Martilotti reportedly fainted, shouting "Mein Gott! Mein Gott!" Five days later, Pope Pius XII sent a telegram appealing to Miklós Horthy.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Also at the Jewish Council's request, Vrba and Mordowicz met Michael Dov Weissmandl, an Orthodox rabbi and one of the leaders of the Bratislava Working Group, at his yeshiva in the centre of Bratislava. Vrba writes that Weissmandl was clearly well informed and had seen the Vrba–Wetzler report. He had also seen, as Vrba found out after the war, the Polish major's report about Auschwitz. Weissmandl asked what could be done. Vrba explained: "The only thing to do is to explain ... that they should not board the trains ...". He also suggested bombing the railway lines into Birkenau. (Weissmandl had already suggested this, on 16 May 1944, in a message to the American Orthodox Jewish Rescue committee.) Vrba wrote about the incongruity of visiting Weissmandl at his yeshiva, which he assumed was under the protection of the Slovak government and the Germans. "The visibility of yeshiva life in the center of Bratislava, less than south of Auschwitz, was in my eyes a typical piece of Goebbels–inspired activity ... There—before the eyes of the world—the pupils of Rabbi Weissmandel could study the rules of Jewish ethics while their own sisters and mothers were being murdered and burned in Birkenau."


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Several appeals were made to Horthy, including by the Spanish, Swiss and Turkish governments, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gustaf V of Sweden, the International Committee of the Red Cross and, on 25 June 1944, Pope Pius XII. The Pope's telegram did not mention Jews: "We are being beseeched in various quarters to do everything in our power that, in this noble and chivalrous nation, the sufferings, already so heavy, endured by a large number of unfortunate people, because of their nationality or race, may not be extended and aggravated."


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: John Clifford Norton, a British diplomat in Bern, cabled the British government on 27 June with suggestions for action, which included bombing government buildings in Budapest. On 2 July American and British forces did bomb Budapest, killing 500 and dropping leaflets warning that those responsible for the deportations would be held to account. Horthy ordered an end to the mass deportations on 6 July, "deeply impressed by Allied successes in Normandy", according to Randolph Braham, and anxious to exert his sovereignty over the Germans in the face of threats of a pro-German coup. According to Raul Hilberg, Horthy may also have been worried about information cabled by the Allies in Bern to their governments at the request of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, informing them of the deportations. The cables were intercepted by the Hungarian government, which may have feared that its own members would be held responsible for the murders.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The Vrba–Wetzler report received widespread coverage in the United States and elsewhere when, after many months delay, John Pehle of the US War Refugee Board issued a 25,000-word press release on 25 November 1944, along with a full version of the report and a preface calling it "entirely credible". Entitled "The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz (Oświęcim) and Birkenau in Upper Silesia", the release included the 33-page Vrba–Wetzler report; a six-page report from Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz, who escaped from Auschwitz on 27 May 1944; and the 19-page Polish major's report, written in December 1943 by Polish escapee Jerzy Tabeau. Jointly the three reports came to be known as the Auschwitz Protocols.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The "Washington Times Herald" said the press release was "the first American official stamp of truth to the myriad of eyewitness stories of the mass massacres in Poland", while the "New York Herald Tribune" called the Protocols "the most shocking document ever issued by a United States government agency". Pehle passed a copy to "Yank" magazine, an American armed-forces publication, but the story, by Sergeant Richard Paul, was turned down as "too Semitic"; the magazine did not want to publish it, they said, because of "latent antisemitism in the Army". In June 1944 Pehle had urged John J. McCloy, US assistant secretary of war, to bomb Auschwitz, but McCloy had said it was "impracticable". After the publication of the Protocols, he tried again. McCloy replied that the camp could not be reached by bombers stationed in France, Italy or the UK, which meant that heavy bombers would have to fly to Auschwitz, a journey of 2,000 miles, without an escort. McCloy told him: "The positive solution to this problem is the earliest possible victory over Germany."


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: After dictating the report in April 1944, Vrba and Wetzler stayed in Liptovský Mikuláš for six weeks, and continued to make and distribute copies of the report with the help of a friend, Joseph Weiss. Weiss worked for the Office for Prevention of Venereal Diseases in Bratislava and allowed copies to be made in the office. The Jewish Council gave Vrba papers in the name of Rudolf Vrba, showing Aryan ancestry going back three generations, and supported him financially with 200 Slovak crowns per week, equivalent to an average worker's salary; Vrba wrote that it was "sufficient to sustain me underground in Bratislava". On 29 August 1944 the Slovak Army rose up against the Nazis and the reestablishment of Czechoslovakia was announced. Vrba joined the Slovak partisans in September 1944 and was later awarded the Czechoslovak Medal of Bravery.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Auschwitz was liberated by the 60th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front (part of the Red Army) on 27 January 1945; 1,200 prisoners were found in the main camp and 5,800 in Birkenau. The SS had tried to destroy the evidence, but the Red Army found what was left of four crematoria, as well as 5,525 pairs of women's shoes, 38,000 pairs of men's, 348,820 men's suits, 836,225 items of women's clothing, large numbers of carpets, utensils, toothbrushes, eyeglasses and dentures, and seven tons of hair.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In 1945 Vrba met up with a childhood friend, Gerta Sidonová from Trnava. They both wanted to study for degrees, so they took courses set up by Czechoslovakia's Department of Education for those who had missed out on schooling because of the Nazis. They moved after that to Prague, where they married in 1947; Sidonová took the surname Vrbová, the female version of Vrba. She graduated in medicine, then went into research. In 1949 Vrba obtained a degree in chemistry (Ing. Chem.) from the Czech Technical University in Prague, which earned him a postgraduate fellowship from the Ministry of Education, and in 1951 he received his doctorate (Dr. Tech. Sc.) for a thesis entitled "On the metabolism of butyric acid". The couple had two daughters: Helena (1952–1982) and Zuzana (b. 1954). Vrba undertook post-doctoral research at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, where he received his C.Sc. in 1956. From 1953 to 1958 he worked for Charles University Medical School in Prague. His marriage ended around this time.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: With the marriage over and Czechoslovakia ruled by a Soviet Union-dominated socialist government, Vrba and Vrbová both defected, he to Israel and she to England with the children. Vrbová had fallen in love with an Englishman and was able to defect after being invited to an academic conference in Poland. Unable to obtain visas for her children, she returned illegally to Czechoslovakia and walked her children back over the mountains to Poland. From there they flew to Denmark with forged papers, then to London.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In 1957 Vrba became aware, when he read Gerald Reitlinger's "The Final Solution" (1953), that the Vrba–Wetzler report had been distributed and had saved lives; he had heard something about this in or around 1951, but Reitlinger's book was the first confirmation. The following year he received an invitation to an international conference in Israel, and while there, he defected. For the next two years, he worked at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. He later said that he had been unable to continue living in Israel because the same men who had, in his view, betrayed the Jewish community in Hungary were now in positions of power there. In 1960 he moved to England, where he worked for two years in the Neuropsychiatric Research Unit in Carshalton, Surrey, and seven years for the Medical Research Council. He became a British subject by naturalization on 4 August 1966.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: On 11 May 1960 Adolf Eichmann was captured by the Mossad in Buenos Aires and taken to Jerusalem to stand trial. (He was sentenced to death in December 1961.) Vrba was not called to testify because the Israeli Attorney General had apparently wanted to save the expense. Because Auschwitz was in the news, Vrba contacted the "Daily Herald" in London, and one of their reporters, Alan Bestic, wrote up his story, which was published in five installments over one week, beginning on 27 February 1961 with the headline "I Warned the World of Eichmann's Murders." In July 1961 Vrba submitted an affidavit to the Israeli Embassy in London, stating that, in his view, 2.5 million had been murdered in Auschwitz, plus or minus 10 percent.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba testified against Robert Mulka of the SS at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, telling the court that he had seen Mulka on the "Judenrampe" at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The court found that Vrba "made an excellent and intelligent impression" and would have been particularly observant at the time because he was planning to escape. It ruled that Mulka had indeed been on the ramp, and sentenced him to 14 years in prison.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Following the "Herald" articles, Bestic helped to write Vrba's memoir, "I Cannot Forgive" (1963), also published as "Factory of Death" (1964). Bestic's writing style was criticized; reviewing the book, Mervyn Jones wrote in 1964 that it has the flavour of "the juicy bit on page 63". Erich Kulka criticized the book in 1985 for minimizing the role played by the other three escapees (Wetzler, Mordowicz and Rosin); Kulka also disagreed with Vrba regarding his criticism of Zionists, the Slovak Jewish Council, and Israel's first president. The book was published in German (1964), French (1988), Dutch (1996), Czech (1998) and Hebrew (1998). It was republished in English in 1989 as "44070: The Conspiracy of the Twentieth Century" and in 2002 as "I Escaped from Auschwitz".


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba moved to Canada in 1967, where he worked for the Medical Research Council of Canada from 1967 to 1973, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1972. From 1973 to 1975 he was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, where he met his second wife, Robin Vrba, originally from Fall River, Massachusetts. They married in 1975 and returned to Vancouver, where she became a real-estate agent and he an associate professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia. He worked there until the early 1990s, publishing over 50 research papers on brain chemistry, diabetes, and cancer.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Claude Lanzmann interviewed Vrba in November 1978, in New York's Central Park, for Lanzmann's nine-and-a-half-hour documentary on the Holocaust, "Shoah" (1985); the interview is available on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHHM). The film was first shown in October 1985 at the Cinema Studio in New York. A quote from Vrba's interview is inscribed on a USHMM exhibit:


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba testified in January 1985, along with Raul Hilberg, at the seven-week trial in Toronto of the German Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. Zündel's lawyer, Doug Christie, tried to undermine Vrba (and three other survivors) by requesting ever more detailed descriptions, then presenting any discrepancy as significant. According to Lawrence Douglas, when Vrba said he had watched bodies burn in a pit, Christie asked how deep the pit had been; when Vrba described an SS officer climbing onto the roof of a gas chamber, Christie asked about the height and angle. When Vrba told Christie he was not willing to discuss his book unless the jury had read it, the judge reminded him not to give orders.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Christie argued that Vrba's knowledge of the gas chambers was secondhand. According to Vrba's deposition for Adolf Eichmann's trial in 1961, he obtained information about the gas chambers from "Sonderkommando" Filip Müller and others who worked there, something that Müller confirmed in 1979. Christie asked whether he had seen anyone gassed. Vrba replied that he had watched people being taken into the buildings and had seen SS officers throw in gas canisters after them: "Therefore, I concluded it was not a kitchen or a bakery, but it was a gas chamber. It is possible they are still there or that there is a tunnel and they are now in China. Otherwise, they were gassed." The trial ended with Zündel's conviction for knowingly publishing false material about the Holocaust. In "R v Zundel" (1992), the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Zundel's appeal on free-speech grounds.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In 1987 the Swedish–Hungarian biochemist George Klein travelled to Vancouver to thank Vrba; he had read the Vrba–Wetzler report in 1944 as a teenager in Budapest and escaped because of it. He wrote about the meeting in an essay, "The Ultimate Fear of the Traveler Returning from Hell", for his book "Pietà" (1992). The traveller's ultimate fear, English scholar Elana Gomel wrote in 2003, was that he had seen Hell but would not be believed; in this case, the traveller knows something that "cannot be put into any human language".


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Despite the significant influence Vrba had on Klein's life, Klein's first sight of Vrba was the latter's interview in "Shoah" in 1985. He disagreed with Vrba's allegations about Kastner; Klein had seen Kastner at work in the Jewish Council offices in Budapest, where Klein had worked as a secretary, and he viewed Kastner as a hero. He told Vrba how he had tried himself, in the spring of 1944, to convince others in Budapest of the Vrba–Wetzler report's veracity, but no one had believed him, which inclined him to the view that Vrba was wrong to argue that the Jews would have acted had they known about the death camps. Vrba said that Klein's experience illustrated his point: distributing the report via informal channels had lent it no authority.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Klein asked Vrba how he could function in the pleasant, provincial atmosphere of the University of British Columbia, where no one had any concept of what he had been through. Vrba told him about a colleague who had seen him in Lanzmann's film and asked whether what the film had discussed was true. Vrba replied: "I do not know. I was only an actor reciting my lines." "How strange," the colleague replied. "I didn't know that you were an actor. Why did they say that film was made without any actors?" Klein wrote:


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba's fellow escapee, Alfréd Wetzler, died in Bratislava, Slovakia, on 8 February 1988. Wetzler was the author of "Escape From Hell: The True Story of the Auschwitz Protocol" (2007), first published as "Čo Dante nevidel" (lit. "What Dante didn't see", 1963) under the pseudonym Jozef Lánik.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba died of cancer, aged 81, on 27 March 2006 in hospital in Vancouver. He was survived by his first wife, Gerta Vrbová; his second wife, Robin Vrba; his daughter, Zuza Vrbová Jackson; and his grandchildren, Hannah and Jan. He was pre-deceased by his elder daughter, Dr. Helena Vrbová, who died in 1982 in Papua New Guinea during a malaria research project. Robin Vrba made a gift of Vrba's papers to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in New York.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Several documentaries have told Vrba's story, including "Genocide" (1973), directed by Michael Darlow for ITV in the UK; "Auschwitz and the Allies" (1982), directed by Rex Bloomstein and Martin Gilbert for the BBC; and Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah". Vrba was also featured in "Witness to Auschwitz" (1990), directed by Robin Taylor for the CBC in Canada; "Auschwitz: The Great Escape" (2007) for the UK's Channel Five; and "Escape From Auschwitz" (2008) for PBS in the United States. George Klein, the Hungarian-Swedish biologist who read the Vrba–Wetzler report in Budapest as a teenager, and who escaped rather than board a train to Auschwitz, wrote about Vrba in his book "Pietà" (MIT Press, 1992).


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In 2001 Mary Robinson, then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Vaclav Havel, then President of the Czech Republic, established the "Rudy Vrba Award" for films in the "right to know" category about unknown heroes. In 2014 the Vrba–Weztler Memorial began organizing an annual 130-km, five-day walk from the "Mexico" section of Auschwitz, where the men hid for three days, to Žilina, Slovakia, following the route they took. In January 2020 a PBS film "Secrets of the Dead: Bombing Auschwitz" presented a reconstruction of Vrba's escape, with David Moorst as Vrba and Michael Fox as Wetzler.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba's place in Holocaust historiography was the focus of Ruth Linn's "Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting" (Cornell University Press, 2004). The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies at the City University of New York held an academic conference in April 2011 to discuss the Vrba–Wetzler and other Auschwitz reports, resulting in a book, "The Auschwitz Reports and the Holocaust in Hungary" (Columbia University Press, 2011), edited by Randolph L. Braham and William vanden Heuvel. In 2014 the British historian Michael Fleming reappraised the impact of the Vrba–Wetzler report in "Auschwitz, the Allies and Censorship of the Holocaust" (Cambridge University Press, 2014).


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The University of Haifa awarded Vrba an honorary doctorate in 1998 at the instigation of Ruth Linn, with support from Yehuda Bauer.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: For having fought during the Slovak National Uprising, Vrba was awarded the Czechoslovak Medal for Bravery, the Order of Slovak National Insurrection (Class 2), and the Medal of Honor of Czechoslovak Partisans.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: British historian Martin Gilbert supported an unsuccessful campaign in 1992 to have Vrba awarded the Order of Canada. The campaign was supported by Irwin Cotler, the former Attorney General of Canada, who at the time was a professor of law at McGill University. Similarly, Bauer proposed unsuccessfully that Vrba be awarded an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba stated that warning the Hungarian community was one of the motives for his escape. His statement to that effect was first published on 27 February 1961, in the first installment of a five-article series about Vrba by a journalist, Alan Bestic, for the "Daily Herald" in England. In the second installment the next day, Vrba described having overheard the SS say they were looking forward to Hungarian salami, a reference to the provisions Hungarian Jews were likely to carry. Vrba said that in January 1944 a kapo had told him the Germans were building a new railway line to bring the Jews of Hungary directly into Auschwitz II.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The Czech historian Miroslav Kárný noted that there is no mention of Hungarian Jews in the Vrba–Wetzler report. Randolph L. Braham also questioned Vrba's later recollections. The Vrba–Wetzler report said only that Greek Jews were expected: "When we left on April 7, 1944 we heard that large convoys of Greek Jews were expected." It also said: "Work is now proceeding on a still larger compound which is to be added later on to the already existing camp. The purpose of this extensive planning is not known to us."


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In 1946, Dr. Oskar Neumann, head of the Jewish Council in Slovakia, whose interviews with Vrba and Wetzler in April 1944 helped to form the Vrba–Wetzler report, wrote in his memoir "Im Schatten des Todes" (published in 1956) that the men had indeed mentioned Hungarian salami to him during the interviews: "These chaps did also report that recently an enormous construction activity had been initiated in the camp and very recently the SS often spoke about looking forward to the arrival of Hungarian salami." Vrba wrote that the original Slovak version of the Vrba–Wetzler report, some of which he wrote by hand, may have referred to the imminent Hungarian deportations. That version of the report did not survive; it was the German translation that was copied. Vrba had argued strongly for the inclusion of the Hungarian deportations, he wrote, but he recalled Oskar Krasniansky, who translated the report into German, saying that only actual deaths should be recorded, not speculation. He could not recall which argument prevailed. Alfred Wetzler's memoirs, "Escape from Hell" (2007), also say that he and Vrba told the Slovakian Jewish Council about the new ramp, the expectation of half a million Hungarian Jews, and the mention of Hungarian salami.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: It was a source of distress to Vrba for the rest of his life that the Vrba–Wetzler report had not been distributed widely until June–July 1944, weeks after his escape in April. Between 15 May and 7 July 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and most murdered on arrival. In his view, the deportees boarded the trains in the belief they were being sent to some kind of Jewish reservation.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Arguing that the deportees would have fought or run had they known the truth, or at least that panic would have slowed the transports, Vrba alleged that Rudolf Kastner of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee (who had a copy of the Vrba–Wetzler report by 3 May 1944 at the latest) had held back the report to avoid jeopardizing complex, and mostly futile, negotiations with Adolf Eichmann and other SS officers to exchange Jews for money and goods. In taking part in these negotiations, Vrba argued, the SS was simply placating the Jewish leadership to avoid rebellion within the community.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In "I Cannot Forgive" (1963), Vrba drew attention to the 1954 trial in Jerusalem of Malchiel Gruenwald, a Hungarian Jew living in Israel. In 1952 Gruenwald accused Rudolf Kastner, who had become a civil servant in Israel, of having collaborated with the SS so that he could escape from Hungary with a select few, including his family. Kastner had bribed the SS to allow over 1,600 Jews to leave Hungary for Switzerland on the Kastner train in June 1944, and he had testified on behalf of leading SS officers, including Kurt Becher, at the Nuremberg trials.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba agreed with Gruenwald's criticism of Kastner. In "Attorney-General of the Government of Israel v. Malchiel Gruenwald", the Israeli government sued Gruenwald for libel on Kastner's behalf. In June 1955, Judge Benjamin Halevi decided mostly in Gruenwald's favour, ruling that Kastner had "sold his soul to the devil". "Masses of ghetto Jews boarded the deportation trains in total obedience," Halevi wrote, "ignorant of the real destination and trusting the false declaration that they were being transferred to work camps in Hungary." The Kastner train had been a pay-off, the judge said, and the protection of certain Jews had been "an inseparable part of the maneuvers in the 'psychological war' to destroy the Jews". Kastner was assassinated in Tel Aviv in March 1957; the verdict was partly overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel in 1958.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In addition to blaming Kastner and the Hungarian Aid and Rescue Committee for having failed to distribute the Vrba–Wetzler report, Vrba criticized the Slovakian Jewish Council for having failed to resist the deportation of Jews from Slovakia in 1942. When he was deported from Slovakia to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland in June that year, the Jewish Council had known, he alleged, that Jews were being murdered in Poland, but they did nothing to warn the community and even assisted by drawing up lists of names. He referred to Jewish leaders in Slovakia and Hungary as "quislings" who were essential to the smooth running of the deportations: "The creation of Quislings, voluntary or otherwise, was, in fact, an important feature of Nazi policy" in every occupied country, in his view.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer argued that while the Council knew that being sent to Poland meant severe danger for Jews, at that stage they did not know about the Final Solution It is true, Bauer wrote, that Jewish Council members, under Karol Hochberg, head of the council's "department for special tasks", had worked with the SS, offering secretarial and technical help to draw up lists of Jews to be deported (lists supplied by the Slovak government). But other members of the Jewish Council warned Jews to flee and later formed a resistance, the Working Group, which in December 1943 took over the Jewish Council, with Oskar Neumann (the lawyer who helped to organize the Vrba–Wetzler report) as its leader. Vrba did not accept Bauer's distinctions.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba's position that the Jewish leadership in Hungary and Slovakia betrayed their communities was supported by the Anglo-Canadian historian John S. Conway, a colleague of his at the University of British Columbia, who from 1979 wrote a series of papers in defence of Vrba's views. In 1996 Vrba repeated the allegations in an article, "Die mißachtete Warnung: Betrachtungen über den Auschwitz-Bericht von 1944" ("The warning that was ignored: Considerations of an Auschwitz report from 1944") in "Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte", to which the Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer responded in 1997 in the same journal. Bauer responded to Conway in 2006.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In Bauer's opinion, Vrba's "wild attacks on Kastner and on the Slovak underground are all a-historical and simply wrong from the start", although he acknowledged that many survivors share Vrba's view. By the time the Vrba–Wetzler report had been prepared, Bauer argued, it was too late for anything to alter the Nazis' deportation plans. Bauer expressed the view that Hungarian Jews knew about the mass murder in Poland even if they did not know the particulars; and if they had seen the Vrba–Wetzler report, they would have been forced onto the trains anyway. In response, Vrba alleged that Bauer was one of the Israeli historians who, in defence of the Israeli establishment, had downplayed Vrba's place in Holocaust historiography.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: The British historian Michael Fleming argued in 2014 against the view that Hungarian Jews had sufficient access to information. After the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, the British government's Political Warfare Executive (PWE) directed the BBC's Hungarian Service to run Allied warnings to the Hungarian government that "racial persecution will be regarded as a war crime". However, on 13 April, the PWE decided against broadcasting warnings directly to Hungarian Jews on the grounds that it would "cause unnecessary alarm" and that "they must in any case be only too well-informed of the measures that may be taken against them". Fleming writes that this was a mistake: the Germans had tricked the Jewish community into thinking they were being sent to Poland to work. The first mention of extermination camps in the PWE's directives to the BBC's Hungarian Service came on 8 June 1944.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Randolph L. Braham, a specialist in the Holocaust in Hungary, agreed that Hungarian Jewish leaders did not keep the Jewish communities informed or take "any meaningful precautionary measures" to deal with the consequences of a German invasion. He called this "one of the great tragedies of the era". Nevertheless, it remains true, he argued, that by the time the Vrba–Wetzler report was available, the Jews of Hungary were in a helpless state: "marked, hermetically isolated, and expropriated". In northeastern Hungary and Carpatho-Ruthenia, the women, children and elderly were living in crowded ghettos, in unsanitary conditions and with little food, while the younger men were in military service in Serbia and the Ukraine. There was nothing they could have done to resist, he wrote, even if they had known about the report.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba was criticized in 2001 in a collection of articles in Hebrew, "Leadership under Duress: The Working Group in Slovakia, 1942–1944", by a group of Israeli activists and historians, including Bauer, with ties to the Slovak community. The introduction, written by a survivor, refers to the "bunch of mockers, pseudo-historians and historians" who argue that the Bratislava Working Group collaborated with the SS, a "baseless" allegation that ignores the constraints under which the Jews in Slovakia and Hungary were living. Vrba (referred to as "Peter Vrba") is described as "the head of these mockers", although the introduction makes clear that his heroism is "beyond doubt". It concludes: "We, Czechoslovakian descendants, who personally experienced [the war] cannot remain silent in face of these false accusations."


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In Vrba's view, Israeli historians tried to erase his name from Holocaust historiography because of his views about Kastner and the Hungarian and Slovak Jewish Councils, some of whom went on to hold prominent positions in Israel. When Ruth Linn first tried to visit Vrba in British Columbia, he practically "chased her out of his office", according to Uri Dromi in "Haaretz", saying he had no interest in "your state of the Judenrats and Kastners".


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Linn wrote in her book about Vrba, "Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting" (2004), that Vrba's and Wetzler's names had been omitted from Hebrew textbooks or their contribution minimized: standard histories refer to the escape by "two young Slovak Jews", "two chaps", and "two young men", and represent them as emissaries of the Polish underground in Auschwitz. Dr. Oskar Neumann of the Slovak Jewish Council referred to them in his memoir as "these chaps"; Oskar Krasniansky, who translated the Vrba–Wetzler report into German, mentioned them only as "two young people" in his deposition for the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. There was also a tendency to refer to the Vrba–Wetzler report as the Auschwitz Protocols, which is a combination of the Vrba–Wetzler and two other reports. The 1990 edition of the "Encyclopedia of the Holocaust", published by Yad Vashem in Israel, did name Vrba and Wetzler, but in the 2001 edition they are "two Jewish prisoners".


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: Vrba's memoir was not translated into Hebrew until 1998, 35 years after its publication in English. As of that year, there was no English or Hebrew version of the Vrba–Wetzler report at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, an issue the museum attributed to lack of funding. There was a Hungarian translation, but it did not note the names of its authors and, Linn wrote, could be found only in a file that dealt with Rudolf Kastner. Linn herself, born and raised in Israel and schooled at the prestigious Hebrew Reali School, first learned about Vrba when she watched Claude Lanzmann's film "Shoah" (1985). In 1998 she polled 594 students at the University of Haifa, either third-year undergraduates or first-year graduate students; 98 percent said that no one had ever escaped from Auschwitz, and the remainder did not know the escapees' names. This failure to acknowledge Vrba has played into the hands of Holocaust deniers, who have tried to undermine his testimony about the gas chambers.


title: Rudolf Vrba

text: In 2005 Uri Dromi of the Israel Democracy Institute responded that there were at least four Israeli books on the Holocaust that mention Vrba, and that Wetzler's testimony is recounted at length in Livia Rothkirchen's "Hurban yahadut Slovakia" ("The Destruction of Slovak Jewry"), published by Yad Vashem in 1961.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Richard Wendell Morton (born September 21, 1956) is an American professional wrestler, currently performing on the independent circuit. He is the current GCW Television Champion, after pinning Matt Cardona at GCW Say You Will. For most of his career, Morton has performed with Robert Gibson as The Rock N' Roll Express, described as "the consummate baby face tag team". Morton has wrestled for multiple promotions in the United States including the Continental Wrestling Association, Mid-South Wrestling, Jim Crockett Promotions, World Championship Wrestling, Smoky Mountain Wrestling, the World Wrestling Federation, and Extreme Championship Wrestling, as well as the Japanese promotions All Japan Pro Wrestling, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and Wrestle Association R.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton has held dozens of championships throughout his career, including the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship, NWA World Tag Team Championship, USWA Unified World Heavyweight Championship, USWA World Tag Team Championship, and WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Championship. He has been inducted into the NWA Hall of Fame, Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame, and WWE Hall of Fame. His skill at driving audiences into a sympathetic frenzy by convincingly selling pain gave rise to the expression "playing Ricky Morton".


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton was trained by his father, Paul, and by veteran wrestler Ken Lucas. He debuted in 1978, facing Ken Wayne in his debut match. He wrestled primarily for the Continental Wrestling Association in Memphis, Tennessee, often teaming with Lucas or Eddie Gilbert. Morton quickly became a popular performer thanks to his "athletic prowess", "sensational looks", and "spiky blond mullet". His popularity with female fans saw him dubbed a "teen idol".


title: Ricky Morton

text: In early 1983, promoters Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler paired Morton with Robert Gibson as The Rock 'n' Roll Express in an attempt to replicate the popularity of The Fabulous Ones. They won the Mid-South Tag Team Title three times and feuded with the team that would become their archrivals, The Midnight Express of Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condrey. Because of his small stature and good looks, he was usually made the "Face in Peril", meaning he would be the one to take most of the punishment in the matches to get the fans behind the team. He was also the one that always suffered a humiliation or "injury" to further the storyline the team would be involved in. Nowadays, this is sometimes referred to as "Playing Ricky Morton". At this time they also teamed in Joe Blanchard's South West wrestling territory feuding with The Grapplers.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 1984, Morton took part in a high-profile angle with Randy Savage which saw Savage piledrive him through a table at ringside.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 1981, Morton began wrestling for NWA Tri-State. He formed a tag team with Eddie Gilbert, winning the NWA Tri-State Tag Team Championship twice. His second reign ended in August 1981 when he left the promotion.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 1984, Morton and Gibson began wrestling regularly for Mid-South Wrestling, the successor to NWA Tri-State. They won the Mid-South Tag Team Championship three times during 1984, trading the titles with The Midnight Express. Their third and final reign lasted until March 1985, when they lost to Steve Williams and Ted DiBiase. They continued to appear with Mid-South Wrestling until June 1985.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton and Gibson reappeared with Mid-South Wrestling, by then renamed the Universal Wrestling Federation, throughout 1986. At the "Superdome Extravaganza" supercard in the Louisiana Superdome in June 1986, Morton unsuccessfully challenged Ric Flair for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 1985, both teams moved on to the NWA's Jim Crockett Promotions and became famous due to the national television exposure of TBS. Ricky and Robert had a major feud with the "Russians", Ivan and Nikita Koloff and won the NWA World Tag Team Title. They traded the title again with the Russians and lost them to their hated rivals the Midnight Express on February 2, 1986 during "Superstars on the Superstation" due to their manager, Jim Cornette. Cornette used his tennis racket on Robert to help his team win.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Fearing that his self-proclaimed sex appeal with women was being threatened by Morton, NWA Champion Ric Flair began a feud with Morton in 1986. In the spring of that year, Morton was having an interview at ringside when Flair came onto the set and insulted Morton's fans (who consisted mostly of tween girls) by calling them "teenyboppers in their training bras." He gave Morton a training bra as a "gift from one of Flair's girlfriends" and told Morton that he couldn't handle real, grown-up women. In response, Morton stomped on Flair's sunglasses. This led to a fight and then a series of matches, the most notable being their Steel Cage match at the 1986 Great American Bash. To help build Morton as a serious title contender, it was pointed out that he once went to a one-hour draw with then-AWA Champion Nick Bockwinkel. Morton never won the title but he proved that he was of the same caliber as Flair was in the ring. At one point in the feud with Flair, after a six-man tag team elimination match in which Morton pinned Flair to become the winner, Flair and the other three Four Horsemen invaded the Rock 'n' Roll Express' dressing room and attacked Morton, rubbing his face on the concrete floor, causing a grotesque-looking facial injury. They also broke his nose in another attack. Horsemen member Arn Anderson would also make fun of Morton, calling him "Punky Morton," which was a play on the popular 1980s sitcom "Punky Brewster". The term used to belittle Morton backfired when fans began to use it as a term of endearment. Morton and Gibson won the title back from the Midnight Express and feuded with Ole and Arn Anderson for the rest of the year. They culminated this feud with a win over the Andersons in a cage match at Starrcade on November 28. This victory started the Horsemen's dissatisfaction with Ole, who was kicked out of the stable just months later. Morton and Gibson then lost the title to Rick Rude and Manny Fernandez on December 6, 1986, whom they feuded with from December 1986 to June 1987. When Rude left for the World Wrestling Federation, the title was given back to the Rock & Roll Express, with the explanation that they won the title accompanied by footage of a prior non-title match won by the Rock & Roll Express where they pinned the champions.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton and Gibson then feuded briefly with the New Breed, Sean Royal and Chris Champion, but this feud ended when the New Breed were injured in an auto accident. Their next feud was with Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard, who won the title from them on September 29, 1987 after Jim Cornette's new Midnight Express of Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane attacked them and injured Morton's arm and shoulder. Morton came out in the middle of the match and blindly tagged Gibson and courageously tried to wrestle but the Horsemen soon took advantage and Gibson gave up the match to save Morton more pain. They feuded for a few months with the Horsemen keeping the titles by getting themselves disqualified, and injuring Gibson's ribs.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In May 1988, Morton and Gibson toured Japan with All Japan Pro Wrestling, competing in the Super Power Series and facing teams including Samson Fuyuki and Toshiaki Kawada, Shinichi Nakano and Tiger Mask, and Isamu Teranishi and Masanobu Fuchi. They returned for a second tour in October 1988, this time competing in the October Giant Series. In the final match of their tour they unsuccessfully challenged Fuyuki and Kawada for the All Asia Tag Team Championship.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 1989, Morton and Gibson went to United States Wrestling Association were they feuded with Wildside (Chris Champion and Mark Starr) and The Blackbirds, King Parsons and Action Jackson. Later that year he teamed with his cousin, Todd Morton and won the CWA Tag team titles.


title: Ricky Morton

text: They returned to World Championship Wrestling in 1990. Gibson injured his knee and Morton teamed with Big Josh and Junkyard Dog to win the WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Championship.


title: Ricky Morton

text: On June 12, 1991, at Clash of the Champions XV, Morton was in the ring to accept an invitation by Alexandra York to join her York Foundation. Gibson appeared and said he was healthy and ready to go and to everybody's shock, Morton turned on Gibson and beat him down before leaving with York, Mr. Hughes and Terrence Taylor. He changed his name to Richard Morton and they soon added Tommy Rich, who became Thomas Rich. They feuded with Gibson, Dustin Rhodes and Bobby Eaton and won the WCW World Six-Man Tag Team Title. At The Great American Bash in July 1991, Morton defeated Gibson. In October 1991 at Halloween Havoc, Morton lost to Flyin' Brian in a bout for the newly created WCW Light Heavyweight Championship.


title: Ricky Morton

text: They disbanded in early 1992 and Morton was used as a preliminary heel jobber where he teamed with various heels like Diamond Dallas Page. Morton made his last WCW TV appearance in a match against Barry Windham on July 18, 1992.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton and Gibson returned to World Championship Wrestling in January 1993 feuding with The Heavenly Bodies. They appeared at SuperBrawl III and defeated Heavenly Bodies.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 1992, Morton joined Smoky Mountain Wrestling and reformed the Rock & Roll Express with Gibson on August 8, 1992 during a match in Johnson City, Tennessee. They went back and forth to the two promotions. They feuded with two versions of The Heavenly Bodies for the next year and a half, Stan Lane and Tom Prichard, and Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray. They feuded with The Gangstas (New Jack and Mustafa Saed) in 1994 and went to the NWA to win the Tag Title again in 1995. During 1995 he also teamed briefly with David Jericho. Later that year, he reunited with Gibson and they feuded with PG-13. Both Morton and Gibson left USWA in 1996.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 1993, Morton and Gibson debuted in the World Wrestling Federation on the September 27, 1993, episode of "Monday Night Raw", defeating Barry Hardy and Duane Gill. Recognized on WWF television as the SMW Tag Team Champions, they went on to defend the championship in bouts on "WWF All American Wrestling" and "WWF Superstars". At Survivor Series on November 24, 1993, they lost the championship to The Heavenly Bodies (Tom Prichard and Jimmy Del Ray), leaving the WWF thereafter.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton and Gibson briefly returned to the WWF in July 1994, joining the WWF Summer Fest tour of Germany and losing a series of matches to The Smoking Gunns.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In July 1993, Morton and Gibson toured Japan with Wrestle Association R, facing Último Dragón and Yuji Yasuraoka in a series of bouts. They returned for a second tour in November 1994 as part of the WAR-ISM 1994 event, facing members of Fuyuki-Gun on several occasions.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton and Gibson returned to World Championship Wrestling on the June 3, 1996 episode of "WCW Monday Nitro". They briefly feuded with The Four Horsemen. They remained with the promotion until October 1996.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In May 1996, Morton and Gibson wrestled four bouts for the Japanese promotion Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling (FMW). At the FMW 7th Anniversary Show in Kawasaki Stadium, Morton, Gibson and Ricky Fuji defeated Boogie Man, Crypt Keeper, and Freddy Krueger in a six-man tag team bout.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton returned for a second tour with FMW in April 1997, participating in the "Fighting Creation" tournament as part of a three-man team with Fuji and Hayabusa. At the FMW 8th Anniversary Show in Yokohama Arena, he and Fuji defeated Dragon Winger and Hido. Morton returned once more in August 1997, teaming with Fuji in the "Super Dynamism" tournament. During the tournament, Morton, Fuji, and Jinsei Shinzaki lost to Mr. Gannosuke, The Gladiator, and Super Leather in a "no ropes barbed wire street fight".


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton debuted in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based promotion Extreme Championship Wrestling at ECW House Party 1997 on January 11, 1997. He teamed with Tommy Rich in a loss to The Gangstas; following the bout, Morton and Rich faced one another in an impromptu match that was won by Rich. He returned to ECW the following month at Crossing the Line Again, losing to Big Stevie Cool.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In January 1998, both Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson returned to WWF as part of the "NWA" angle as the NWA Tag Team Champions. They lost the titles to The Headbangers on February 17 episode of Raw Is War. They competed at WrestleMania XIV for the tag team battle royal won by The Legion of Doom. In the spring they feuded with the NWA Tag Team Champions New Midnight Express Bart Gunn and Bob Holly. This took them to their match at which Gunn and Holly won.


title: Ricky Morton

text: After leaving WWF in May 1998, they went to work for Ohio Valley Wrestling and Power Pro Wrestling until 1999. Morton then appeared on Juggalo Championship Wrestling's JCW Vol. 1 in a battle royal.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 2003, they briefly were part of Vince Russo's S.E.X. group in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA). They feuded with America's Most Wanted. Morton lost to Kid Kash on July 30.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Since leaving TNA, Morton wrestles all over the independent circuit in the Southeast and on the East Coast and often wins regional titles. Occasionally, he teams with Gibson as the Rock 'N Roll Express. In 2003/2004, he, along with Robert Gibson, joined the All World Wrestling league/Big Time Wrestling. On March 31, 2007 in Logan, West Virginia, Morton defeated Bobby Eaton in an NWA Legends Match during ASW's Rumble In The Jungle show. On April 27, 2007 in Memphis, Tennessee at the "PMG Clash of Legends" event put on by Memphis Wrestling, Morton and Kid Kash captured the MW Southern Tag Team Championship, defeating Too Cool II. On June 30, 2007 The Rock & Roll Express (Ricky and Todd Morton) beat Big and Tasty (Sweet William Valentine and Playboy Mike Trusty) to win the AWA Supreme Tag Team titles. On October 24, 2007 The Rock & Roll Express lost the AWA Supreme Tag Team Titles to Chaos Theory (Khris Kaliber and Karma). On January 4, 2014, Morton defeated Chase Owens to win the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship. He re-lost the title to Owens on March 7.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 2016, The Rock N' Roll Express made a special appearance as part of TNA's weekly televised program "Impact Wrestling"'s Total Nonstop Deletion episode, where they took part in the Tag Team Apocalypto match along with other tag teams.


title: Ricky Morton

text: The team made their New Japan Pro-Wrestling debut during the Fighting Spirit Unleashed 2019 event, 3 events promoted by NJPW in the United States.


title: Ricky Morton

text: In 2019, Morton and Gibson wrestled three bouts for New Japan Pro-Wrestling and also appeared in All Elite Wrestling.


title: Ricky Morton

text: The Rock N Roll Express participated in the 2019 edition of the Jim Crockett Cup, but were defeated by The Briscoe Brothers in the first round. During the NWA television tapings on October 1, 2019, they won the NWA World Tag Team Championship. In January 2020, Morton entered a rivalry with Nick Aldis, leading to a Heavyweight Championship match on "NWA Powerrr" which Morton lost.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton's father, Paul, was a professional wrestling referee. His cousin Todd Morton also wrestled, occasionally teaming with Morton.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton was arrested in October 2005 for failing to pay child support. Morton contended that the outstanding payments were due to the child support amount having been set when he was earning a significant income working for major promotions as a part of The Rock N' Roll Express, and failed to reflect the much lower amount he was able to earn on the independent circuit. At least two benefit shows were put together in February 2006 to raise money towards his legal fees. A United Wrestling Association show in Alcoa, Tennessee on February 2, 2006, raised $2,475 for this cause. On February 15, 2006, Morton was released under the condition that he continue working and making efforts to catch up on the delinquent payments owed to his ex-wife. He returned to the ring the next night for the United Wrestling Association. In September 2007, while camping with his children at a Tennessee park, Morton was rearrested on the same charges. It was estimated he owed a remaining balance of $63,000. A website was established, and raised enough funds to secure his bail.


title: Ricky Morton

text: Morton currently operates School of Morton in Chuckey, Tennessee, where he lends his ring experience to all his students. He also still works the independent circuit and cameos in several films and videos.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen Long (; ; born 18 January 1989), is a Chinese former professional badminton player. He is the 2016 Olympic champion, two-time World champion, and an Asian champion.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen was a former World number 1, occupying the top men's singles ranking for 76 consecutive weeks from December 2014 to June 2016. He started his achievements in the international stage by winning the boys' singles title in the Asian and World Junior Championships in 2007, and then won his first professional tournament in the Philippines Open in 2009.


title: Chen Long

text: Born in Shashi District, Jingzhou, Hubei Province, Chen had shown his talent as a badminton player when he was young, and entered the Sports School in Jingzhou at the age of seven in 1996. In 2000, he joined the Xiamen team, and was selected to join the national youth team in 2005. In 2006, Chen entered the national second team.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen emerged as an Asian Junior Champion in 2007, and at the same year, he won the World Junior Championships. He also helped the Chinese team won the 2007 Suhandinata Cup.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen won his first professional title at the Grand Prix Gold event in the 2009 Philippines Open, beating Hu Yun of Hong Kong in the final.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen participated in the Korea Open Super Series in January. He made it through to the semi-finals before losing to Danish player Peter Gade in three games, 13–21, 21–10, 17–21. A week later, in the Malaysia Open, he lost in the opening round to Boonsak Ponsana of Thailand.


title: Chen Long

text: In March, at the German Open, Chen lost in the final to his teammate, Bao Chunlai in two straight games. At the All England Open, he registered an impressive victory over 8th seed Jan Ø. Jørgensen in the first round but fell to Korea's Son Wan-ho 18–21, 21–18, 19–21 in the second round. He followed up this disappointment with his best-ever performance in a Super Series event by making it through to the final of the Swiss Open, where he finished runner-up to compatriot Chen Jin.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen was part of the Chinese team that won gold at the 2010 Thomas Cup in Kuala Lumpur. He only featured in their opening match against Peru, taking just 31 minutes to beat his opponent, before being replaced in the team by Bao Chunlai for the later rounds. Chen's first individual title of 2010 came at the Bitburger Open in Germany, where he beat Denmark's Hans-Kristian Vittinghus 21–3, 12–21, 21–9 in the final of the Grand Prix Gold event. His good form continued when he finished runner-up to teammate Lin Dan at the China Masters two weeks later, going down 15–21, 21–13, 14–21 to the reigning Olympic champion.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen obtained a second team gold medal of the year with China at the Asian Games held in Guangzhou, but did not feature in the individual event. More success followed when he won the China Open Super Series two weeks later. His passage to the final included a controversial walkover by Lin Dan in the quarter-finals and a hard-fought victory over current World champion Chen Jin in the semi-finals. In the final, he squared off against teammate Bao Chunlai, emerging as the victor after 75 minutes of play. Chen's attempt at back-to-back Super Series titles came to an end at the hands of former Olympic champion Taufik Hidayat in the semi-final of the Hong Kong Open the following week. Chen's strong finish to the year saw his world ranking rise to a career-high of 4th, briefly becoming the top ranked Chinese player.


title: Chen Long

text: In the first tournament of the new season, Chen Long was convincingly beaten by world number 1 Lee Chong Wei in the semi-final of the Malaysia Open. It took just 39 minutes for the Malaysian to blow away the upcoming Chinese star with a score of 21–9, 21–9. The effects of the demoralising defeat were still evident a week later when Chen lost in the second round of the Korea Open to Japanese player Kenichi Tago. His first individual title of the year came at the Thailand Open, where he beat experienced Korean player Lee Hyun-il in the final.


title: Chen Long

text: In August, Chen was eliminated in the first round of the World Championships by unheralded Guatemalan player Kevin Cordón in what was one of the shock results of the tournament. Cordón emerged the victor after clinching the third set 27–25 in a thrilling encounter. Chen sprang back from his shock exit from the World Championships by winning his first China Masters title after defeating his compatriot Chen Jin in the final. A week later, he won his first Japan Open by avenging his Malaysia Open loss to world number 1 Lee Chong Wei in the final. In October, Chen won his third consecutive Super Series tournament with another victory over Lee Chong Wei, this time in the final of the Denmark Open in its first year as a Premier Super Series event.


title: Chen Long

text: His highlights of the season were followed by an exit from the semi-finals of Hong Kong Open to his senior, Chen Jin and failure to defend his China Open title after losing to his compatriot, Lin Dan, in the final. He ended year 2011 with another runner-up in Super Series Master Finals, being beaten by Lin Dan again.


title: Chen Long

text: In January, Chen reached the semi-finals of the Malaysia Open, where he lost to the home favorite, Lee Chong Wei in three games, 18-21, 21-17, 13-21. In March, he participated in the All England Open and was knocked out in the quarter-finals by Kenichi Tago. He then reached the semi-finals of the Swiss Open but was eliminated by Lee Hyun-il. In April, at the Badminton Asia Championships, Chen lost in the semi-finals to his teammate, Du Pengyu. In May, at the Thomas Cup, he won all the matches that he played in, thus helping China to clinch their ninth title. In June, Chen lost in the pre-quarterfinals of Indonesia Open, to Parupalli Kashyap, 21–17, 21–14.


title: Chen Long

text: In the 2012 Summer Olympics, Chen was defeated in the semi-final of the men's singles competition by Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia, 21–13, 21–14, but went on to win bronze after defeating Lee Hyun-il in the bronze medal match. After the Olympics, Chen's form picked up tremendously, starting from winning the China Masters in September, where he beat Hong Kong's Hu Yun in the final. In October, he reached the semi-finals of the Denmark Open but was eliminated by his compatriot Du Pengyu once again. In November, he won both the China Open and the Hong Kong Open, beating Wang Zhengming and Lee Chong Wei respectively in the finals. At year-end, BWF Superseries Finals, Chen managed to avenge his previous defeats to Du Pengyu on tours, by beating him in the final to win his first Superseries Finals title.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen carried his good form into the new season. In February, Chen won his first German Open title, defeating Tommy Sugiarto in the final. In March, Chen won convincingly against Lee Chong Wei in the 2013 All England Open in the finals, 21–17, 21–18. In April, at the Badminton Asia Championships, Chen once again lost to his teammate, Du Pengyu, albeit in the final this time. Despite missing the last two Sudirman Cup editions in 2009 and 2011, Chen Long emerged as the first singles player to help China lift its fifth consecutive trophy in 2013 edition. At the BWF World Championships held in August, Chen reached the quarter-finals but was defeated by Lin Dan. He won the Denmark Open against Lee Chong Wei, 24–22, 21-19, and then successfully defended his China Open title against compatriot Wang Zhengming in three games.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen started the year with a victory against Lee Chong Wei in the Korean Open. Then, he was unable to defend his All England title as he lost to Lee Chong Wei in the finals. He subsequently lost in the Indian Open finals to the same opponent. In May, Chen played first singles for China at the 2014 Thomas Cup. They were unable to defend their title as they lost 0–3 to Japan in the semifinals. Chen took the blame for the surprise loss of the Chinese Team, casting doubt on his ability to depose Lin Dan as China's MS 'big brother'. Chen's poor start to the season continued deep into the summer, when he saw early-round knockouts in the Japan Open to Hu Yun of Hong Kong and Indonesian Open to Denmark's Jan Ø. Jørgensen.


title: Chen Long

text: However, his fortune reversed at the most important competition of the year. On 31 August, Chen defeated Lee Chong Wei in the finals with a score of 21–19, 21–19 to win his first-ever World Championship title at 2014 BWF World Championships held in Copenhagen, breaking his 7-month title drought. He would then continue this excellent form for the rest of the season, defeating Son Wan-ho in the final of the 2014 Denmark Super Series Premier, his 6th Super Series Premier title to date and first of the year. He would also make the finals of the 2014 Hong Kong Super Series. Chen ended the season on a high note after winning the 2014 BWF Super Series Masters Finals in Dubai, boasting a 3–0 record in the Group Stage and defeating Hans-Kristian Vittinghus 21–16, 21–10 in the final. With this victory, Chen ascended to World No.1, dethroning rival Lee Chong Wei and achieving the title of Year-End No.1 on the BWF World Ranking. This marked the first time in 6 years that a player other than Lee Chong Wei ended the year at the coveted No.1 ranking. Despite a slow start to the year, Chen's 2014 was characterised by his first-ever World Championship, solid victories at the Denmark Open and Super Series Masters Finals, and for the first time achieving the rank of World No.1.


title: Chen Long

text: Starting the year as World No.1, Chen's first tournament of the season was the 2015 All England Super Series Premier, considered as the most reputable Super Series Premier title. Defeating compatriot Lin Dan in straight sets (21-13, 21-12) en route to the finals, Chen won his second All England title in 3 years with a 15–21, 21–17, 21–15 over Jan O Jorgensen. Chen continued his winning form in his next tournament, the 2015 Malaysia Super Series Premier, defeating Lin Dan, this time with a tighter scoreline of 20–22, 21–13, 21–11. Two consecutive victories over Lin Dan, long considered China's strongest badminton player in the men's singles discipline, was considered by many as Chen's resolute ascension to the position of China MS No.1. A second-round exit to Hu Yun at the 2015 Singapore Super Series and a semi-final loss at the Badminton Asia Championships to compatriot Tian Houwei by way of walkover put a stop to Chen's tournament-winning streak. In May, Chen was part of the Chinese team that won the Sudirman Cup. Victory over Viktor Axelsen at the 2015 Australian Super Series final with a score of 21–12, 14–21, 21-18 put Chen back in winning shape. This was followed by a quarter-finals exit at the 2015 Indonesia Super Series Premier, a tournament in which Chinese players routinely lose during the early stages. However, Chen would rediscover his form in the 2015 Chinese Taipei Open Grand Prix Gold with a victory over home favorite Chou Tien-chen.


title: Chen Long

text: He would then defend his World Championship title at the 2015 BWF World Championships held in Jakarta. Chen reached the final of the championships with ease, winning in 2 sets over each of his opponents, including Japanese rising star and then-World No.4 Kento Momota 21–9, 21–15 in the semi-finals. In a rematch of the 2014 final, Chen was again victorious over rival Lee Chong Wei, successfully defending his World Champion title with an easier scoreline of 21–14, 21–17. This marked the second World Championship title for Chen, which secured him the position of Year-End No. 1, again. Chen would follow this up with another Super Series victory at the 2015 Korea Open Super Series, during which he defeated unseeded Ajay Jayaram 21–14, 21–13 in the final.


title: Chen Long

text: In October, Chen continued his fine form by defeating Tommy Sugiarto in the final to win the Denmark Super Series Premier. This was Chen's 8th Super Series title, bringing his total SS (including Premier) tally to 16 and year-to-date titles to 7, the most he has achieved in one season. In November 2015, Chen reached the China Open final without losing a single set, however, a resurgent Lee Chong Wei proved tough to beat, losing the finals in two straight sets 21–15, 21-11, halting his 7 straight finals win in 2015. In December 2015, Chen made the semi-finals of the Super Series Finals in Dubai.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen's first tournament of the season was the All England Open, whereby he only reached the Round of 16 after being defeated by his compatriot Xue Song. In April, he participated in the Malaysia Open and finished as the runner-up, losing to Lee Chong Wei in the final. At the Singapore Open held in the same month, he lost in the quarter-finals to Hong Kong's Ng Ka Long Angus. Chen then followed up with two final appearances in his next two tournaments. Unfortunately, he did not win any of those, losing in the China Masters to compatriot Lin Dan and the Badminton Asia Championships to Lee Chong Wei.


title: Chen Long

text: At the 2016 Olympic Games, Chen Long was the second seed behind World No.1 Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia. After defeating Niluka Karunaratne of Sri Lanka 21–7, 21-10 and Poland's Adrian Dziółko 21–12, 21-9 during the Group Stage, Chen Long was qualified for the knockout rounds. In the quarter-finals, he defeated Son Wan-ho of South Korea by a tight scoreline of 21–11, 18–21, 21–11, after which he defeated eventual bronze-medalist Denmark's Viktor Axelsen 21–14, 21–15 in the semi-finals. Facing Lee Chong Wei in the Badminton Men's Singles final at the Pavilion 4, Riocentro on 20 August 2016, Chen Long clinched the Olympic gold medal after he defeated the Malaysian (Lee Chong Wei) and won the match in straight games with a score of 21–18, 21–18, earning his first Olympic gold medal.


title: Chen Long

text: In February, at the German Open, Chen reached the semi-finals but was defeated by Wang Tzu-wei in three games. In March, at the All England Open, Chen lost to Tanongsak Saensomboonsuk in the Round of 16 in straight games, 16–21, 19–21. In April, at the Badminton Asia Championships held in Wuhan, China, Chen defeated Lin Dan in the rubble set game, 21–23, 21–11, 21–10, of the men's singles final and he gets his first Asian Championships title. In May, at the 2017 Sudirman Cup, Chen won all the three games he played in, but in the final, China lost to Korea by 2–3. In June, at the Crown Group Australia Open, Chen lost to Kidambi Srikanth in the men's singles final in straight-set game, 20–22, 16–21. In August, at the Total BWF World Championships, Chen lost to Viktor Axelsen in the men's singles quarter-finals, 9–21, 10–21. He failed to defend his World Championship title of 2015. In November, at the China Open Superseries Premier in Tahoe, China, Chen defeated Viktor Axelsen in the men's singles final by the rubble set game, 21–16, 14–21, 21–13 and gets his fourth China Open title. At the Yonex–Sunrise Hong Kong Open, Chen lost to Lee Chong Wei by straight-set game, 14–21, 19–21. In the Dubai Superseries Final, Chen withdrew due to a knee injury.


title: Chen Long

text: In January, Chen participated in the Malaysia Masters and the Indonesia Masters and did not perform well. He was eliminated in the first round of the Malaysia Masters and the quarter-finals of the Indonesia Masters to Anthony Ginting on both occasions. In March, at the All England Open, Chen lost in the quarter-finals to the eventual champion, Shi Yuqi. At the Badminton Asia Championships, he finished as runner-up after losing the Kento Momota in the final. In May, he represented the national team in the 2018 Thomas Cup. In the group stage, he defeated H. S. Prannoy from India and Brice Leverdez from France. In the quarter-finals, he defeated Chou Tien-Chen from Chinese Taipei. China beat Chinese Taipei 3–0. In the match against Indonesia in the semi-finals, he defeated Anthony Ginting in two sets. During the final match, China faced Japan. He lost his match against the 2018 World Champion and then World number 1 Kento Momota in two sets, but although he lost his match, China beat Japan 3–1 and won the Thomas Cup. In August, at the BWF World Championships, Chen lost in the semi-finals to his junior, Shi Yuqi again, thus finishing with a bronze medal. At the Asian Games, he helps the Chinese team to win gold after defeating Indonesia in the final. In the individual event, he was eliminated in the quarter-finals by Anthony Ginting again. In September, Chen lost in the quarter-finals of both the Japan and China Open to Khosit Phetpradab and Anthony Ginting respectively. In October, he won his first French Open title by defeating Shi Yuqi in the final. In November, Chen lost in the semi-finals to Kento Momota, at the Fuzhou China Open.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen began his season at the Malaysia Masters where he reached the final but was defeated by Son Wan-ho in straight games. He then participated in the Indonesia Masters where he lost to Viktor Axelsen in the quarter-finals. In March, he was upset in the first round of the All England Open by Denmark youngster, Rasmus Gemke. Chen followed up his disappointment with a better showing at the Swiss Open where he managed to reach the semi-finals before losing to B. Sai Praneeth. In April, he reached the final of the Malaysia Open but lost to his compatriot Lin Dan. At the Singapore Open, Chen was eliminated by Anthony Ginting in the quarter-finals. At Badminton Asia Championships, he gave a walkover at the quarter-finals due to high fever. In May, Chen was part of the Chinese team that won the Sudirman Cup. In August, he participated in the BWF World Championships and lost to Anders Antonsen in the quarter-finals. In September, Chen was defeated by Kento Momota in the semi-finals of the China Open. In October, Chen finished as a runner-up in the Denmark Open, after losing the Kento Momota again. He then rebounded by winning the French Open, his second consecutive and his first individual title of the year. At the end-year BWF World Tour Finals, he lost to Anthony Ginting in the semi-finals.


title: Chen Long

text: In 2020, Chen participated in only two tournaments before the COVID-19 outbreak ended his season early. In January, he reached the quarter-finals of the Malaysia Masters where he lost to Viktor Axelsen in three games. Similarly, in March, he reached the quarter-finals of the All England Open but lost to Lee Zii Jia in straight games.


title: Chen Long

text: At the delayed 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Chen's first tournament of the year, he managed to reach the final after defeating Raul Must and Pablo Abian in the group stage, Lee Zii Jia in the Round of 16, Chou Tien-chen in the quarter-finals and Anthony Ginting in the semi-finals. However, in the final, he was not able to overcome Viktor Axelsen, thus failing to defend his title from 2016. After the Olympics, Chen received heavy criticism from the Chinese netizens, calling him “useless” and a “disgrace”. Zhang Jun, the head coach of the Chinese Badminton Association, then revealed that Chen's less-than-ideal performance may have been due to a blister on the ball of his foot that had developed during the group stage of the competition and it was so bad that he could not run. He added that he was touched by Chen’s fighting spirit to continue playing. In September, Chen participated in the Chinese National Championships and declared that it will be his last.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen Long married former World No.1 badminton player Wang Shixian in 2017, after over a decade together. Wang gave birth to a son in June 2019.


title: Chen Long

text: Chen Long's surname was actually pronounced Shèn but the word 谌 is pronounced chén when not used as a surname. As a result of this, mispronunciation happens a lot, and early in his career when he enrolled in China's athlete system his surname was registered incorrectly as Chen. He tried to correct it but failed because of bureaucracy and finally let go of it.


title: Chen Long

text: The BWF World Tour, which was announced on 19 March 2017 and implemented in 2018, is a series of elite badminton tournaments sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF). The BWF World Tour is divided into levels of World Tour Finals, Super 1000, Super 750, Super 500, Super 300 (part of the HSBC World Tour), and the BWF Tour Super 100.


title: Chen Long

text: The BWF Superseries, which was launched on 14 December 2006 and implemented in 2007, was a series of elite badminton tournaments, sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF). BWF Superseries levels were Superseries and Superseries Premier. A season of Superseries consisted of twelve tournaments around the world that had been introduced since 2011. Successful players were invited to the Superseries Finals, which were held at the end of each year.


title: Chen Long

text: The BWF Grand Prix had two levels, the Grand Prix and Grand Prix Gold. It was a series of badminton tournaments sanctioned by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) and played between 2007 and 2017.