The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor

The vast majority of those sent to Auschwitz died within a matter of months—in many cases, just a few hours—either murdered with poison gas or worked slowly to death. Eddie Jaku writes that the average life expectancy for those not killed right away was about seven months, and that many prisoners lost hope long before that and died by suicide, often by throwing themselves onto the camp’s electrified fence. The ones who survived, he says, were those who were able to “shut off everything but the will to live” (111), including their feelings of grief, hopelessness, and horror at what they had seen. However “surreal” or nightmarish their surroundings, for them to survive they had to accept the twisted logic of the new world they found themselves in and quickly learn its topsy-turvy rules. As much as physical endurance, this demanded an indomitable psychological resilience.

Often, survival depended on cleverness, deception, and an ability to improvise. For instance, Eddie’s friend Kurt, knowing that the Nazis lacked detailed records on his small town, told them he was a “shoemaker,” which gave him a chance at a (relatively) safe manufacturing job. Since prisoners would be killed upon the first sign of a debilitating illness or weakness, many shared strategies and devices to conceal physical ailments.