During the interview, I also shared more of the results of the exclusive new polling we conducted through McLaughlin & Associates, a nationally-respected polling firm. We asked 1,000 likely U.S. voters the following question: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: ‘If the world does not take decisive action, and the Iranian regime is permitted to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, the Iranian regime will one day attempt to annihilate the State of Israel and bring about a Second Holocaust’?”
80.2% of Americans agreed and said they fear a “Second Holocaust.”
16.1% disagreed.
3.7% said they did not know.
To me, this is a stunning number. It indicates that Americans do not see the history of the Nazi Holocaust as some kind of ancient history. Across the board, Americans of all ages, income groups, ethnic groups, religions, political ideologies and regions of the country are deeply concerned that a “Second Holocaust” may be coming if world leaders do not take decisive action to stop Iran before it is too late.
Are Christians willing to stand with Israel and the Jewish people in the face of this rising threat? This is a subject pastors, Christian leaders and lay people need to discuss. During the 1930s and ’40s, there were brave Christians who did love and defend and rescue Jews. But we also know many who called themselves “Christians” did nothing. That was a tragic failing of the Church. Will we do better this time around, as new evils rise?
I’m both humbled and excited to announce that as part of The Auschwitz Escapebook tour, I will be speaking at a Synagogue in Manhattan, in an event hosted by an Orthodox Rabbi.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, Chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone, and the chief rabbi of the Israeli community of Efrat (ancient “Ephratah,” near Bethlehem), will be one of the main speakers. I will be the other.
Please make plans to join us for a very special evening as we discuss the themes of the novel, some of the key lessons of the Holocaust, whether Christians risked their lives to save Jews, why many Jews felt alone during World War II, what Jews and Christians need to know about each other in light of history, and where Jewish-Christian relations stand today.
RSVP to Ohr Torah Stone: (212) 935-8672, or email to ohrtorahstone@otsny.org.
We are planning to have a book signing afterwards.
Again, I am really looking forward to this event with Rabbi Riskin. Please sign up to come and encourage your family, friends, synagogue members and church members to RSVP and come with you.
(Washington, D.C.) — Who were the four real heroes who escaped from Auschwitz 70 years ago this spring, the men whose lives inspired The Auschwitz Escape?
Today FoxNews.com has published a column I have written giving their names and sketching out their dramatic stories.
I hope you’ll take a moment to read the whole column, and then share it with others. Thanks so much.
They pulled off the greatest escape in human history – from a Nazi death camp – to tell the world the truth about Hitler, but no one knows their names.
By Joel C. Rosenberg, for FoxNews.com
To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.
In 1933, the world was blindsided by the rise of Adolf Hitler.
In 1939, it was stunned by the German invasion of Poland and the Nazi leader’s bloodthirsty quest for global domination. Perhaps most tragically, most of the world did not understand Hitler’s plan to annihilate the Jews until it was almost too late.
Today, we face dangerous new threats from Iran, North Korea, and a rising czar in Russia, not from Germany.
Yet curiously, in recent weeks Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor have each warned that as we confront current challenges we must be careful to learn the lessons of history regarding how the world failed to understand the threat posed by Hitler and the Nazis and deal with it decisively, before events spun out of control.
I agree, and as an example, I would point the extraordinary events that occurred in the spring of 1944.
Four men pulled off the greatest escapes in all of human history, from a Nazi death camp in southern Poland. They did not simply escape to save their own lives. Nor did they escape merely to tell the world about a terrible crime against humanity that had been – and was being – committed. What set these true heroes apart is that they planned and executed their escapes in the hope of stopping a horrific crime before it was committed – the extermination of the Jews of Hungary.
To commemorate the 70th anniversary of these escapes, and to draw attention to the significance these unknown – or unremembered – events, and the lessons they have to teach us, I recently wrote a work of historical fiction, “The Auschwitz Escape.” I changed the names of key figures involved so as not to put words in their mouths that cannot be verified to be their own. But it is my deepest hope that the book will cause many to dig into the real history of these remarkable heroes.
Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler were Slovak Jews. They escaped from Auschwitz on April 7, 1944.
Arnost Rosin was also a Slovak Jew. Czeslaw Mordowicz was a Polish Jew. Together they escaped from Auschwitz on May 27, 1944.
(Washington, D.C.) — In preparing for the launch of The Auschwitz Escape, I contracted with a nationally-respected polling company to ask a series of questions that would help me better understand American attitudes towards the Holocaust, Israel, the Iranian nuclear threat, and the crises in Syria and Ukraine. The results were both fascinating and sobering.
In the days ahead, I will share all the results of this polling data with you. But given the crisis in Ukraine, I decided to begin by writing a column for National Review Online releasing the results of how Americans now perceive Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Who is Vladimir Putin, and what does he really want? Why exactly has he suddenly sent tens of thousands of heavily armed Russian troops into Crimea? Why did he invade Georgia in 2008? Why is he selling arms to bloodthirsty regimes like that of Bashar Assad in Syria? And why is selling both advanced arms and nuclear technology to a rogue terrorist state like Iran?
In the face of such questions, President Obama looks disoriented and confused. He and his national-security team have been painfully slow to understand the Putin threat. They’re now scrambling to develop a coherent and convincing policy to contain Putin, much less have a chance at rolling him back.
The American people now see Putin as a real and growing threat, and not just to the former Soviet republics but to the national security of the United States and our allies, including Israel.
This month, I engaged McLaughlin & Associates, a nationally-respected polling firm, to ask a series of questions of 1,000 likely U.S. voters. Among them:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: “In light of Russia’s invasion of southern Ukraine, and Russia selling arms and nuclear technology to Iran, and Russia selling arms to the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria, I have come to believe that Vladimir Putin and the government of Russia pose a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States and our ally, Israel”?
In 2012, Mr. Obama mocked those who even raised such a question. Today, a remarkable 72 percent of Americans said they agreed with such a statement. Only 19 percent disagreed.
Are they right? Is Putin as serious a threat as Americans believe? To answer that question requires going beyond Washington conventional wisdom and listening carefully to what he has said in the past….
(Washington, D.C.) — “Top Israeli defense officials have hurriedly put in place a confidential list of secret security measures in light of the baffling disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jumbo jet that experts fear could become a weapon of mass destruction if in the wrong hands,” Fox News reported last night.
“With no trace of Beijing-bound flight MH370 after nine days, one of several theories that has emerged is that the plane was hijacked to Iran, where it could be turned into a massive and devastating weapon,” Fox reported. ” Two Iranian passengers are known to have been aboard, travelling on false passports. While Israeli officials did not confirm any suspicions regarding Iran, experts said it is not a stretch to point the finger at Israel’s middle east nemesis.”
“We are watching a spell-binding international geopolitical thriller,” I told Greta. “I’m a novelist — post (working for) Netanyahu. This is playing out moment by moment in a mystery that everyone wants to know what the answer is, and the Israelis have a specific concern. They’re watching a security environment deteriorate all around them. Syria is imploding. You’ve got chemical weapons that were supposed to be removed, now what will the Russians do? So they’re watching this very closely, and they’re probably a target, among others.”
Greta asked if the Israelis have specific intelligence indicating they were responding to.
“I can’t answer that question,” I replied. “But here’s what they [Israel] do know — al Qaeda, Iran, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, everyone wants them hit….So you have to take every precaution.”
Iran released a video recently showing an Iranian attack on Tel Aviv. We know two Iranians using stolen passports were on the Malaysian flight. As more evidence emerges, officials are indicating that the flight’s course was deliberately changed from a heading towards China to a direction that could potentially have taken the plane to India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or even on to Iran or in the Middle East.
Worst case scenario: the plane was either hijacked by Radical Islamic terrorists — or the pilots, who are Muslim, were radicalized and part of the plot — and the plane was made to disappear so that it could be used for a 9/11-style attack, or even as a weapon of mass destruction. God forbid.
Greta noted we’re not hearing much from the U.S. government.
“Actually, you’re not hearing from any country except Israel about taking increased security measures. That’s how sensitive the Israelis are to this….They haven’t lost a plane of their own since 1968. Nobody has hijacked an Israeli plane. But once you have a situation in a place where al Qaeda held a conference, in a region where it’s so clearly no-man’s land in the sense of security, that every interview you’ve had describes the Malaysian military doesn’t know [what happened] or even have a protocol for how to keep track of a plane like this, so the threat is real….It’s a thriller we hope gets solved safely and quickly.”
ORIGINAL POST: (Washington, D.C.) —When I set out to write The Auschwitz Escape, I was eager to portray the drama of the greatest escape in human history — from a Nazi death camp in Poland.
But I was also a bit anxious because I usually write political thrillers about events that could happen in the future, not historical fiction inspired by events that happened in the past.
Yet on the very day of the novel’s nationwide release, it’s hard not to sense history is repeating itself: A dictator is rising to Europe. He smells Western weakness. He is sending troops into other countries. He is seizing land. He is claiming it as his own, and he is daring anyone to stop him.
“Unfortunately instead of de-escalation we have [the] Anschluss of Crimea, which cannot be left without a response,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorskisaid at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.
Tragically, he is right — even The Moscow Times is calling Putin’s moves an “Anschluss.”
On March 13, 1938 — exactly seventy-six years ago this week — German dictator Adolf Hitler annexed Austria after sending Nazi military forces in to invade the country.
To give the illegal action a veneer of respectability, Hitler ordered a national referendum in Austria, and on April 10th, Austrians approved Hitler’s “Anschluss” (annexation) with a vote of 99.7% in favor.
Now, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has successfully launched his own “Anschluss” of Crimea. He sent Russian military forces in to invade the country. Then he orchestrated a national referendum in the southern Ukrainian region, and got a vote of nearly 97% in favor.
Today, in a speech in Moscow, Putin formally announced the annexation of Crimea. Read excerpts of the speech here.
The problem is that so far there has been no serious response to Putin’s moves. Nor was there when he invaded Georgia in 2008. Nor was there when he sold arms and nuclear technology to the terrorist regime of Iran. Or when he sold arms to the bloodthirsty regime of Bashar Assad amidst the horrific war Assad is waging in Syria that has forced 42% of the Syrian people to flee their homesand has left more than 140,000 people dead.
Have we really forgotten the lessons of Hitler and the Holocaust so quickly?
To be clear, there is no evidence Putin is Hitler in the sense that he is building concentration camps and planning a “Final Solution” to annihilate the Jewish people. But Putin wants to be a Czar. He wants to restore the glory of Mother Russia. He wants to rebuild what was lost when the Soviet Union imploded. He sees the West full of “Neville Chamberlains,” leaders who are weak and indecisive. And he is on the move. This is what makes him so dangerous.
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HISTORY WORTH REMEMBERING: Consider this summary from the Encyclopedia Britannica: “In July 1934 Austrian and German Nazis together attempted a coup but were unsuccessful. An authoritarian right-wing government then took power in Austria and kept perhaps half the population from voicing legitimate dissent; that cleavage prevented concerted resistance to the developments of 1938. In February 1938 Hitler invited the Austrian chancellor. Kurt von Schuschnigg to Germany and forced him to agree to give the Austrian Nazis virtually a free hand. Schuschnigg later repudiated the agreement and announced a plebiscite on the Anschluss question. He was bullied into canceling the plebiscite, and he obediently resigned, ordering the Austrian Army not to resist the Germans. President Wilhelm Miklas of Austria refused to appoint the Austrian Nazi leader. Arthur Seyss-Inquart as chancellor. The German Nazi minister Hermann Göring ordered Seyss-Inquart to send a telegram requesting German military aid, but he refused, and the telegram was sent by a German agent in Vienna. On March 12 Germany invaded, and the enthusiasm that followed gave Hitler the cover to annex Austria outright on March 13. A controlled plebiscite of April 10 gave a 99.7 percent approval.”
In November of 2011, I decided to go to visit the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. I’d never been there before. I didn’t really even want to go. But I knew I had to. So I invited several friends — a pastor from the U.S. and his wife, and a pastor from Germany and his wife. Unfortunately, my wife, Lynn, wasn’t able to join me. But the trip had a profound effect on me.
It was a surreal and sobering experience to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. It’s hard to describe the emotions of standing in an actual gas chamber where people were murdered, seeing the ovens where bodies were burned, walking through the cell blocks, seeing the guard towers and barbed wire and train tracks. It was haunting to realize that more than one million people were systematically murdered there, and most of them were Jews.
While I was there, I purchased a book that explained that there had been many escape attempts from Auschwitz, but only a handful of successful escapes. I was stunned. We had hired a special guide to take us through the camp. He was a really bright, educated man. He had been an excellent guide, and we had learned so much. But he hadn’t mentioned anything about escapes. I had never heard about any escapes. But this book gave a brief description of several of them.
Intrigued, as soon as I got home, I started tracking down any resource I could about these men who had risked everything to get out. How had they succeeded? What was their plan? Who helped them? What did they do when they got out? Did they tell anyone in the Jewish community, or among the Allies, what they had seen, what the Nazis were doing at Auschwitz? The more I learned, the more intrigued I became. It turned out there were several non-fiction books written by several of the men who escaped, and several about them. There were even several novels on the subject. But they were old. Some were out of print. If they once had been discussed – I’m sure they were – but they seemed long forgotten.
As I continued to do my research, I realized that April 7th, 2014 would be the 70th anniversary of the greatest escape in human history – the day Rudolf Vrba and Fred Wetzler escaped from the worst of the Nazi death camps. That’s when I began thinking about writing a novel inspired by these true stories that might draw attention back to the greatest escape in human history by men determined to tell the world the truth about what Adolf Hitler was really doing to the Jews. If I could finish it and release it by the spring of 2014, I thought I might be able help people remember these incredible stories of courage and heroism and faith.
Without question, The Auschwitz Escape was by far the most emotionally exhausting book I’ve ever written. By that I mean I had to immerse myself in the history of the Holocaust – books, documentary films, web sites, museums, research centers, conversations with survivors, conversations with experts, and so forth. And the history is more horrific that you can possibly imagine. Even when you think you understand what happened back then, you uncover more darkness, more evil. My wife and kids could see the effect it was having on me. I could see it, as well.
I knew the story needed hope. Yes, the fact that men escape from this unimaginably cruel extermination camp provides hope. They live. They survive. They tell others. Absolutely. But it wasn’t enough. For me, as an evangelical Christian with Jewish roots on my father’s side, I wanted to find out if any Christians did the right thing to help the Jews. Intellectually, I knew the answer was yes, there were Christians who had done the right thing. But I also knew that far too many people who said they loved Jesus refused to obey Him, refused to love their neighbors during the darkest period in the history of the Jewish people. Some were too scared. Some lost their faith. Some never had any faith at all, they were just giving lip service to the Gospel. It breaks my heart, but tragically it is true. Far too many so-called “Christians” failed the Jewish people when they needed us most.
That’s when I stumbled upon the story of Le Chambon and the pastors of this little Protestant village in France who risked their lives to save thousands of Jews fleeing from Hitler and the Nazis. The more I read, the more I knew this was the story of hope I needed to weave into the novel. And I think it’s the combination of the two stories – the story of a German Jewish teenage boy whose family is nearly wiped out and is sent to Auschwitz, and that a young Frenchman who is a husband and a father and an assistant pastor in Le Chambon, both fictional, but both inspired by true stories – it’s the fusion, the combination of these two story lines, that makes The Auschwitz Escape storyline work for me.
Soon, I got fascinated in who these young men were, how they get sent to Auschwitz, how they met, how different they are, and how they get involved in these escapes. This is what gave me hope, even excitement, if I can use that term, to write every day – trying to understand them and going on this hero’s journey with them both not entirely knowing how the story would wind up when I began.
In addition to going to Auschwitz, and reading everything I could get my hands on, I also traveled to Israel and visited Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum and research center. They were very gracious and allowed me to come twice, meet with several of their scholars, ask them many questions, tour their facilities, and try to make sure my work of historical fiction was as accurate as I could possibly make it. Several of the scholars actually knew some of the men who had escaped, had interviewed them, had long discussions with them, and their insights were so helpful.
They also took me down into their vaults and showed me copies of “The Auschwitz Protocol,” the document that was compiled by eyewitness accounts from Rudolf Vrba, Alfred (Fred) Wetzler, Arnost Rosin, and Czeslaw Mordowicz, the four Jewish heroes who risked their lives to tell the world the truth about what the Nazis were really up to. Too few people know these four men’s names, but I hope that will change. The Yad Vashem scholars helped me better understand who they were, and what they wrote, and I hope you take time to understand them, too. It was absolutely fascinating, and I’m deeply grateful for their help.
The novel releases nationwide today. I look forward to your comments — which you can post on our “Epicenter Team” page on Facebook — and your questions!
Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas met with President Obama today at the White House.
(Washington, D.C.) — Here’s a snapshot of some of the most important developments in the epicenter in recent days.
SECRETARY KERRY SAYS ISRAEL WRONG TO INSIST THE PALESTINIANS RECOGNIZE ISRAEL AS A “JEWISH STATE” — “In his appearance before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on March 13, 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry, convener, main proponent, and mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process, found it necessary to make a surprisingly one-sided comment and prejudgment on one of the central and most delicate issues on the negotiating table – Israel’s basic and principled requirement of recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish People,” notes Israeli Ambassador Alan Baker, who helped craft the Olso Accords, in an analysis for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “Kerry opined that he views Israel’s position ‘as a mistake,’ considering that the ‘Jewish State’ issue was ‘sufficiently addressed by UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947, which recommended the establishment of independent Arab and Jewish states in Palestine.’ He said there are ‘more than 30–40 mentions of a ‘Jewish state’ in the resolution, and added that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ‘confirmed that he agreed it [Israel] would be a Jewish state’ in 1988 and in 2004. It would appear that once again, as with previous one-sided and pre-judgmental statements, Secretary Kerry has either been ill-advised or is deliberately engaged in an effort to neutralize the ‘Jewish State’ issue in the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. He is doing so by attempting to determine that the question of Palestinian support for a Jewish state was already resolved by PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1988, and is therefore redundant and unnecessary…..”
PALESTINIAN LEADER ABBAS AT WHITE HOUSE AGAIN REJECTS ISRAEL AS “JEWISH STATE” — “U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he would have to make tough political decisions and take ‘risks’ for peace, as would Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” reported the Times of Israel. “Abbas, for his part, reiterated his rejection of Israel’s demand that its status as a Jewish state be enshrined in a future peace accord, asserting that previous Palestinian recognition of Israel was sufficient….Speaking to Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Abbas said that ‘since 1988 and into 1993, we have been extending our hands to our Israeli neighbors so that we can reach a fair and lasting peace to this problem. Since 1988, we have recognized international legitimacy resolutions and this was a very courageous step on the part of the Palestinian leadership. And in 1993, we recognized the State of Israel.'”
IRAQI OIL PRODUCTION SURGES TO HIGHEST LEVEL IN 30 YEARS — “Iraq’s oil production surged to its highest level in over 30 years last month, surprising skeptics of the country’s efforts to restore its oil industry after decades of war and neglect,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “In its monthly oil report published Friday, the International Energy Agency said Iraq’s oil output jumped by half a million barrels a day in February to average 3.6 million barrels a day. The country hasn’t pumped that much oil since 1979, when Saddam Hussein rose to power. The Iraqi output surge came as the IEA also predicted oil supply from the U.S. and Canada would continue its “relentless” increase this year, easing concerns that higher global demand and geopolitical issues caused by the crisis in Ukraine could push oil prices upward….Iraq’s oil minister said in December the country would target oil production of 4.1 million barrels a day this year. New fields coming on stream are expected to add 500,000 barrels a day of output in the next few months. Last month’s surprise jump in oil production came as a major bottleneck at Iraq’s southern export terminal Basra was finally removed. Shipments of oil from the country rose to 2.8 million barrels a day in February, up by 600,000 barrels a day compared with a year ago.”
Soon, I’ll post details on the true stories that inspired the novel.
In the meantime, it’s great to see so many retailers strongly supporting the book and offering big discounts for those who pre-order it in hardcover, e-book and audio versions. If you’re thinking of getting the book for yourself — or as a gift – pre-order now to take advantage of these great discounts.
LifeWay Bookstores — hardcover(LifeWay is offering a very cool deal — buy The Auschwitz Escapehardcover book at 30% off and get a copy of The Last Jihad (paperback) for free! Please visit your local LifeWay store to take advantage of the deal)
(Virginia Beach, Virginia) — This morning I appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network to discuss The Auschwitz Escape. 
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