Book Description

Eddie Jaku was one among the few thousands who miraculously survived the death camps. When Eddie first entered Auschwitz, he was only a 20-year-old. He didn’t have a name or identity for the next seven years he spent in the notorious death camp. His entire personality, individuality, and identity were relegated to a 6 digit number-172338. Now, 100-year-old, Eddie is anything but bitter or remorse. On the contrary, he is the self-proclaimed happiest man on earth. Eddie remembers vividly how he was crammed into the barracks, made to sleep on the wooden planks, ten men in a single row, with not a stich on any of them. Eddie didn’t know if he would survive the night, let alone live to a centenarian. His survival is hinged on a message he said to himself, repeatedly, religiously reminding himself that if he could hold on to live just another minute, another hour, another day, then, the pain, the deprivation, the agony would end and tomorrow would dawn with rays of hope. Eddie remembered clearly how on some nights when sleep overcame his tediously overworked body and mental exhaustion caused him to slip into a trance, waking to the screams of fellow Jews who could no longer take the drudgery and ran themselves into the electrified barbed fence. Their screams were bone-chilling and he shuddered to remember those odious nights. There were nights when Eddie was tempted badly to join them and put an abrupt end to the morass of misery he was in. but something kept him from taking that step. Once, he did try to escape, but the failed attempt resulted in a bullet wound in his leg. This book is not just about Eddie Jaku, it is about the millions of Jews who were killed mercilessly and what they went through during the Second World War. It is about Eddie Jaku, Eva Mozes, Victor Frankl, and many more whose names have not been mentioned, but this book is also their story. This book attempts to explore the reasons, causes, and an analysis of the Holocaust.