Your Book Review: The Escape Artist

[This is one of the finalists in the 2026 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]Holocaust stories, both true and fictional, tend to repeat the same few clichés over and over. There’s the innocent child who only partially understands what’s happening (Diary of Anne Frank, Boy in the Striped Pajamas). There’s the sentimental redemption story that focuses on a small individual act (Life is Beautiful, The Book Thief). And of course, there’s the good German, or at least the morally conflicted one (Schindler’s List, The Reader).You won’t find any of these tropes in The Escape Artist.This 2022 book by Jonathan Freedland1 tells the true, and largely unknown, story of one of the few Jews ever to break out of Auschwitz. The details of his improbable escape are remarkable…