Silver Coin Submission of the Report on the Auschwitz and Birkenau Death Camps - 80th Anniversary 2024 Proof

80th Anniversary of the Report on the Nazi Extermination Camps Auschwitz and Birkenau by Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba

The silver collector coin issued by the National Bank of Slovakia and minted by the Kremnica Mint in 2024 in Proof quality, weighing 18 g, is dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the submission of the Report on the Auschwitz and Birkenau extermination camps by Alfréd Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba.

The reverse side of the coin is divided in the middle by a vertical straight line. The left side consists of a silhouette of an incomplete triangle made up of several smaller triangles, referring to the system of marking prisoners in the extermination camps. The lower part of the left side is completed with the denomination '10 EURO'. The right part shows the escaping figures of two prisoners together with the names 'ALFRÉD WETZLER', 'RUDOLF VRBA' and the year of the escape '1944'. At the bottom are the stylized initials of the author, academician and the author of the film. sculptor. Ivan Rehak, "IŘ". The semicircular marks leading across the coin field depict the arrangement of guard posts in the concentration camps.

The obverse side of the coin, divided in half by a vertical straight line, is dominated by small triangles folded into one whole, which refer to the distinguishing elements of the prisoners. These are connected to the cartographic mark of the railway line. The teddy bear on the left side of the triangle symbolises the personal effects of the concentration camp victims, while the prisoner registration numbers '44070' and '29162' refer to the numbers assigned to Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba. The two halves are intersected by dotted semicircles, representing a diagram of the guard posts in the camps. The Kremnica mint mark, the year of issue '2024', the name of the state 'SLOVAKIA' and the state emblem of the Slovak Republic complete the circumference of the coin.

The edge of the coin bears the inscription "NOTHING can overcome the courage of a man to face evil".

The Auschwitz I extermination camp was a Nazi concentration camp established in Poland near the town of Auschwitz. More than a million lives were lost there and it became a symbol of the murder of Jews during World War II.
On April 10, 1944, two Jewish prisoners, 26-year-old Alfred Wetzler and six years younger Rudolf Vrba, managed to escape from the camp's perfectly guarded complex. After a 140-kilometre journey, they escaped to Žilina on 25 May 1944, where they wrote a detailed forty-page report on the functioning of the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp. The report, which went down in history as the Vrb and Wetzler Report, became one of the first detailed written eyewitness documents about the Holocaust. It confirmed the authenticity of existing reports on the Nazi concentration camps, which until then had been given little credibility. After the end of World War II, it was used in the so-called Nuremberg Trials and is still considered one of the most important documents of the 20th century.