Part of a series of articles on The Holocaust
Vrba–Wetzler report timeline
Main railroad track into Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Timeline 1942 13 April Alfréd Wetzler taken to Auschwitz. 20 June Kazimierz Piechowski escapes and passes information to the Polish Home Army. 30 June Rudolf Vrba taken to Auschwitz. July Dionys Lenard escapes from Majdanek and is interviewed by the Bratislava Working Group. 2 November Kazimirez Halori escapes and passes information to the Polish Socialist Party. December "Auschwitz–Camp of Death" published by Natalia Zarembina, another Polish escapee; published in English in 1943 (London). 1943 27 April Witold Pilecki escapes. Witold's report is filed away by the OSS. May Stanislaw Chybinski, a member of the Polish Home Army, escapes and compiles the report "Snapshots of Auschwitz". 19 November Jerzy Tabeau and Roman Cieliczko escape. Their January 1944 report becomes known as the "Polish Major's report". March 1944 19 March Germany invades Hungary. 22 March The Washington Post and the New York Herald Tribune report the existence of gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz. April 1944 5 April Siegfried Lederer escapes to warn Jews in Theresienstadt and the Red Cross about the mass murder inside Auschwitz. 7–11 April Vrba and Wetzler escape. 22 / 23 April Vrba and Wetzler arrive in Žilina, Slovakia. 24 April Vrba and Wetzler meet Dr Oscar Neumann of the Bratislava Working Group. 27 April German translation of the Vrba–Wetzler report completed. 28 April The first trainload of Hungarian Jews leaves for Auschwitz. c. 28 April Rezső Kasztner of the Aid and Rescue Committee obtains the report and gives a copy of the report to Geza Soos, Hungarian Foreign Ministry official; Soos gives it to Joszef Elias; Elias's secretary translates it into Hungarian and prepares six copies for Hungarian officials. May 1944 15 May Mass transports begin of Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz, at a rate of 12,000 a day. 27 May Arnost Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz escape Auschwitz. June 1944 4 June The New York Times describes the gas chambers and said that Jews were being executed. 6 June Allied invasion of Normandy, France. mid June The Vrba–Wetzler report reaches the British and US governments. 15 June The BBC World Service reports that 4,000 Jews from Theresienstadt were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz during March 1944. Rosin and Mordowicz tell Krasniansky 100,000 Hungarian Jews were killed on arrival between 15 and 27 May, unaware of what was about to happen to them. 16 June The New York World Telegram repeats the BBC's information. Allen Dulles, Swiss director of the US Office of Strategic Services, sends the Vrba–Wetzler report to the US State Department. 17 June The Los Angeles Times repeats the BBC's information. 20 June 'The Washington Times Herald reports the same, courtesy of Reuters, while The New York Times offers further details. In Bratislava, Vrba discusses his report with Vatican legate Monsignor Mario Martilotti, who then sends a copy to the Vatican via Switzerland. 25 June The New York Times reports that "new mass executions" recently took place in Auschwitz. 30 June The Kastner train, carrying 1,684 Jews, leaves Hungary for Switzerland via Bergen-Belsen. July 1944 1–10 July Several newspapers report that, between April 1942 and April 1944, 1.5 to 1.7 million Jews were killed at Auschwitz (from the Vrba-Wetzler report). 7 July Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy orders a halt to the deportations. 9 July Mass deportations end.
Key figures Rudolf Vrba Alfréd Wetzler Witold Pilecki
Historians Yehuda Bauer Randolph L. Braham John S. Conway Raul Hilberg Miroslav Kárný
"Blood for goods" Kurt Becher Joel Brand Adolf Eichmann Malchiel Gruenwald Heinrich Himmler Rezső Kasztner Kastner train Michael Dov Weissmandl
Background Auschwitz concentration camp The Holocaust History of the Jews in Hungary Hungary in World War II
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In July 1942, Daniel Dionys Lenard escaped from Majdanek concentration camp. He was interviewed by the Bratislava Working Group and brought the first confirmed report of the killings back to the Jewish community in Slovakia.^[1][2][3]

Lenard was born in Žilina and was a Slovak Jew. His sister and his parents illegally entered Palestine before the Holocaust but were caught by the British and returned to Slovakia. Rachel Lenard, Lenard's sister, joined an agricultural Hachshara in Denmark in 1939 from where she went to Sweden and survived. Lenard and his parents remained and were deported to separate camps in the spring of 1942. His parents were murdered. Lenard managed to escape back to Slovakia in July 1942, where he gave an extensive account of the high mortality at the Majdanek concentration camp.^[4][5][6]