Forty-Four Thousand Seventy: The Conspiracy of the Twentieth Century

The author, Dr. Rudolf Vrba, was formerly lecturer at Harvard Medical School & is at present Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the Medical School in Vancouver, Canada. He is internationally renowned for his work on the chemistry of the brain but as a teenager he spent two years in Auschwitz as prisoner No. 44070 & escaped to warn the world. His report made the reality of Nazi death camps explicit & unequivocal to the Pope, to Churchill & to Roosevelt. His considerable academic triumph is in some ways even more remarkable than his dramatic escape from Auschwitz. Neither would have been possible, had Vrba not possessed a keen, cool intellect. Where the escape demanded physical courage of a high order, however, his academic achievements need qualities which are more rare. He had to stifle, if not to destroy, his memories of the past. He had to blanket, if not to obliterate the stench of the crematoria, the sight of unprecedented agony, the thought of utter degradation & the thought of the men who were responsible for it. His Auschwitz number, 44070, is tattooed on his arm; but the scars of the place, the physical & mental scars, he has removed. The book illustrates how it was doneVrba, Rudolf is the author of 'Forty-Four Thousand Seventy: The Conspiracy of the Twentieth Century', published 1989 under ISBN 9780962314001 and ISBN 0962314005.