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

It is January 1945, and the war is going badly for the Germans. The Russian army is now only 20 kilometers away from Auschwitz, and the Nazis are frantic to evacuate the camp and blow up the crematoriums to erase the evidence of their genocide. Eddie and the other prisoners are herded out on a “death march” to other camps, a terrifying ordeal he calls “the hardest time of my life” (120). The temperature falls to 20 degrees below zero centigrade, they are given no food or water, and stragglers are shot in the head. Over the next few days, up to 15,000 prisoners die on the march.

They reach a city called Gleiwitz, where Kurt tells Eddie that he cannot take another step. In despair, Eddie searches the building where they are being lodged and finds a hiding place for him in a crawlspace. Unfortunately, Eddie cannot join him in the crawlspace, since someone must close up the opening from the outside. Eddie rejoins the march, and is eventually put on a train to Buchenwald with thousands of other prisoners. The train carriages are left open to the wind and snow, and Eddie’s group only survives by sewing their jackets together into a single blanket and huddling beneath it.