Richard Rashke was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Guy and Angeline Rashke. He had an older brother Donald. Richard attended local schools and was interested in writing.
Literary career
After working as a journalist, Rashke started pursuing his own topics. His first book, The deacon in search of identity, was about a deacon in the Roman Catholic Church, published by Paulist Press in 1975. He followed the widespread publicity about Karen Silkwood, her death, and the suit which her family brought against her former employer, Kerr-McGee. Her life and activism, and suspicious death, became the subject of his second book, The Killing of Karen Silkwood: The Story Behind the Kerr-McGee Plutonium Case, 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 1982 book, Escape from Sobibor. It was adapted as a 1987 TV movie by the same name, starring the actor Rutger Hauer. One of the survivors of Sobibor whom Rashke interviewed was Esther Terner 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, DC, at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Drawn to compelling personal stories, Rashke has studied subjects including Bill Lear, an aviation engineer and inventor who did not get beyond seventh grade; Pat Bennett, a woman abandoned by her husband who reared three daughters alone; and Tracy Sparshot, an undercover policeman working on the narcotics trade in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Marriage and family
Rashke is married to Paula Rashke. They live in Washington, DC.
Books
In October 1943, Esther Terner and 300 other Jews escaped from Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in eastern Poland. It was the biggest escape of WWII and the subject of Escape from Sobibor. That book, and the movie based on it, brought Esther many invitations to speak in public schools. Her courageous story generated hundreds of letters from children expressing their love, concern and outrage. Those letters became the inspiration for the play, Dear Esther. This is a collection of the heartfelt letters, poems and drawings school children sent Esther, along with the play.
