Impossible Escape by Steve Sheinkin

Impossible Escape tells the story of one determined teenager who survived Auschwitz and became one of the first to reveal details of the Holocaust.

Impossible Escape: The True Story of Survival and Heroism in Nazi Europe by Steve Sheinkin. Roaring Brook, 2023, 219 pages plus Author Note, bibliography, and index.

Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15

Recommended for: ages 15-up

When war reached Slovakia in 1942, 17-year-old Rudi Vrba knew he was certain to be rounded up with other Jewish boys and sent to Germany as slave labor. With his mother’s blessing, he said good-bye to his friends (including pretty Gerta Sidonová) and headed to safer territory. He made a good plan, but got no further than Hungary before the border guards caught him without forged identity papers. He managed to slip away and return to his native land in hopes of receiving the necessary papers, but was picked up again by police. Next he knew, Rudi was in a boxcar carrying him and eighty-odd other prisoners to a destination unknown. He didn’t learn until much later that the raw, unfinished barracks where he ended up was in Poland at a camp called Auschwitz.

Meanwhile, Gerta Sidonová had better luck. Tipped off by friends, she and her family also fled to Hungary. Unlike Rudi, they were able to assume new identities and blend in, all the while knowing that the slightest misstep could put them on a train bound for one of the “relocation camps” they kept hearing about. The Nazi line was that Jews would be put to useful labor for the duration of the war, but was that really true?

Rudi was living the truth, a nightmare of gassed bodies and burned corpses. At first his only aim was to survive, but as the horrors compounded over the next two years, his resolve hardened to a wider purpose: someone had to tell the world what was going on. No one escaped from Auschwitz, but he would find a way and tell his story to anyone who would listen.

This is tough reading and I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone under mid-teens, but it’s a story worth knowing. Rudi managed an escape by craft and providence and became the first to bear witness to the Nazi death camps. In his author note, Sheinkin acknowledges that the testimony may not have accomplished as much as Rudi hoped, but it stands on its own. The Holocaust was not the only WWII atrocity, and other genocides have occurred since, but the only way to avoid such bloodshed in the future is to listen and remember.

Consideration:

• There’s some mild cursing and derogatory terms, particularly “bastards.”

Overall Rating: 4 (out of 5)

Worldview/moral value: 3.5

Artistic/literary value: 4.5

Read more about our ratings here.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: Steve Sheinkin is a premier writer of youth nonfiction. See our review of his first, The Notorious Benedict Arnold. Other outstanding examples are Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon and Fallout: Spies, Superbombs and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown.  
• Reviews: For a gentler introduction to the Holocaust (i.e. children who escaped it), see our reviews of Alias Anna, Nicky and Vera and Just a Girl.

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