Last Stop Auschwitz: My Story of Survival

Thought to be the only complete book written within Auschwitz itself, Eddy de Wind's account of his time in the concentration camp is for readers of The Cut Out Girl and The Boy Who Followed His Father Into Auschwitz. With an afterword by John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Eddy de Wind, a Dutch doctor and psychiatrist, was shipped to Auschwitz with his wife Friedel, whom he had met and married at the Westerbork labour camp in the Netherlands. At Auschwitz, they made it through the brutal selection process and were put to work. Each day, each hour became a battle for survival. For Eddy, this meant negotiating with the volatile guards in the medical barracks. For Friedel, it meant avoiding the Nazis' barbaric medical experiments. Despite such daily stresses, love prevailed. Passing notes through the fence, sometimes stealing a brief embrace, Friedel and Eddy clung to life. As the end of the war approached and the Russian Army drew closer, the last Nazis fled, taking many prisoners with them, including Friedel. Eddy hid under a pile of old clothes and stayed behind. And then he began to write with furious energy about his experiences. Last Stop Auschwitz is an extraordinary account of life as a prisoner, a near real-time record of the daily struggle to survive but also of the flickering moments of joy Eddy and Friedel found in each other. Documenting the best and the worst of humanity, it is a unique and timeless story that reminds us of what we as humans are capable of, but that there is hope, even in Hell. It will linger with you long after the final page has been turned.