Jonathan Freedland’s The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz To Warn the World is headed to the small screen, Variety reports.
Freedland’s book, published last October by Harper, is the true story of Rudolf Vrba, a young Slovak man who was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. He escaped from the camp two years later and co-authored a report on the atrocities there with another escaped prisoner, Alfréd Wetzler.
In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called Freedland’s book “a first-rate account of one of the few Jewish prisoners who escaped Auschwitz” and “a powerful story of a true hero who deserves more recognition.”
Bonafide Films bought the screen rights to the book. The television adaptation will be written by Peter Moffat (Criminal Justice, Undercover); Moffat is also writing the screenplay for Scoop, an upcoming film based on Sam McAlister's Scoops: Behind The Scenes of the BBC's Most Shocking Interviews. Freedland and Moffat are among the show’s executive producers.
“Jonathan Freedland’s conclusion that Rudolf Vrba deserves to ‘stand alongside Anne Frank, Oskar Schindler and Primo Levi in the first rank of stories that define the Shoah,’ is hard to argue with,” Moffat said. “It’s a great privilege to be asked to adapt this profoundly moving work.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
