Richard Rashke

Background

Richard Rashke was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Guy and Angeline (Luksich) Rashke.

Education

Richard attended local schools and was interested in writing.

Career

He is especially known for his history, Escape from Sobibor, first published in 1983, an account of the mass escape in October 1943 of hundreds of Jewish prisoners from the extermination camp at Sobibor in German occupied Poland. The book was adapted as a 1987 television movie by the same name, starring Rutger Hauer. He had an older brother Donald.

After working as a journalist, Rashke started pursuing his own topics.

He followed the widespread publicity about Karen Silkwood, her death, and the suit which her family brought against her former company, Kerr-McGee. Her life and activism, and suspicious death, became the subject of his second book, Killing Karen Silkwood, published by Houghton-Mifflin in 1981.

Becoming interested in the story of resistance showed by hundreds of Jews who escaped from Sobibor, a German Nazi extermination camp in Poland, Rashke did research and interviewed survivors for his 1983 book, Escape from Sobibor. lieutenant was adapted as a 1987 television movie by the same name, starring the actor Rutger Hauer.

One of the survivors of Sobibor whom Rashke interviewed was Esther Raab.

As a result of her talks about her experience, she received many letters, which she shared with Rashke, as she said they helped her heal. His play about her and the influence of the letters, Dear Esther, premiered in 1998 in Washington, District of Columbia at the National Holocaust Museum.

Works

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• book

  • Trust Me

    (TRUST ME takes the reader on an undercover journey from a...)