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

by Eddie Jaku

Through the walls of the train, over the noise of the tracks, I could hear them crying out, one woman shouting, ‘My children are thirsty! They need water! My gold ring for water!’ After two more days, they fell silent. By the time we arrived at our destination, as many as 40 per cent of people in the other carriages had died. In our car, only two people died. Thanks to my father, the rest of the people in our carriage survived.

He took me by the arm and led me maybe 50 metres between the barracks and said, ‘You see the smoke over there? That’s where your father went. And your mother. To the gas chambers and the crematorium.’ This is how I found out I was an orphan.

There is never a day I do not think that I would give everything I have to see her just one more time. If you have the opportunity today, please go home and tell your mother how much you love her. Do this for your mother. And do it for your new friend, Eddie, who cannot tell it to his mother.

I still can’t understand how people with whom I went to work, with whom I studied and played sport, could become animals like that.

Many of Germany’s most respected companies – including some that still trade today – used us for profit.

I was very unhappy – the other Jews in my detail did not trust me because I was German and I soon learned to keep to myself.

The Germans were very precise keepers of records and had information on the locations and professions of Jewish people from all over Germany. This was part of what made them such horrible and efficient killers.

In addition to Nazis, there were many civilians in Auschwitz, the cooks, the drivers. German or Polish, they were just there to survive the war like anyone else.

There were many doctors in Auschwitz – maybe two out of ten of all middle-class German Jews imprisoned were some kind of doctor.

Having even just one good friend means that the world takes on new meaning. One good friend can be your entire world. This, more than the food we shared or the warm clothes or the medicine, was the most important thing.

One afternoon when we woke up, a rival crew of Polish Christians – who hated us as much as the Nazis – were stealing our wagons, replacing them with their own empty carriages.

The SS officers who oversaw the camp realised I had skills in mechanical and precision engineering and classified me as an Economically Indispensable Jew. These Germans – they had a special term for everything.

On three separate occasions, I was taken to the gas chambers and maybe 20 metres before going in, the guard saw my name, number and profession and shouted, ‘Take out 172338!’ Three times! I silently thanked my father, who had insisted I learn the skills that would save my life. He’d always stressed the importance of work. He understood it was the way a person contributed to the world, that it is important for everybody to play their part in order for society to function properly. And beyond that, he understood something fundamental about the world. The machinery of society might not always function the way it is supposed to. In Germany, it broke down altogether, but parts of it kept running, and as long as my professional skills were essential, I would be safe.

It was an impossible task to monitor all the machines at once, so I came up with a solution. I fashioned 200 whistles and gave one to every prisoner in the factory.

My father was, as in all things, right about the importance of education and work. My education saved my life, and not for the first or last time.

Under the Nazi regime, a German man was not immediately an evil man, he was weak and easily manipulated. And slowly but surely, these weak men lost all of their morals and then their humanity. They became men who could torture others and then still go home and face their wives and children.

There were also many regular people caught up in the Nazi way against their will.

But it was sometimes hard for the good Germans to make themselves known. They had to know that they could trust you. If they were caught helping a Jew, it would mean death for them too. The oppressors were just as afraid as the oppressed. This is fascism – a system that makes victims of everybody.

I realised with horror that I would never survive if the local Polish people were my enemy as well as the Germans. I only had one option – to sneak back into Auschwitz.

He told me to lick my fingers and use my saliva as a disinfectant – with no soap and no hot water, it was the only way to clean the wound.

And the advice he gave me was even more valuable than the surgery. ‘Eddie, if you want to survive, when you come back from work, you lay down, rest, conserve your energy. One hour of rest is two days of survival.’

I knew that every calorie spent running around was one calorie less that could be used to stay warm, to heal wounds, to keep myself alive.

I am still in awe of the human body and what it is capable of. I am a precision engineer, and I have spent years making the most complicated, intricate machinery, but I could not make a machine like the human body. It is the best machine ever made. It turns fuel into life, can repair itself, can do anything you need it to.

When I held my eldest son, Michael, in my arms for the first time, it was a miracle. In that one moment, my heart was healed and my happiness returned in abundance. From that day on, I realised I was the luckiest man on Earth. I made the promise that from that day until the end of my life, I would be happy, polite, helpful and kind. I would smile. From that moment, I became a better person. This was the best medicine I could have, my beautiful wife and my child.

You have to try to be happy with what you’ve got. Life is wonderful if you’re happy. Don’t look on the other side of the fence. You will never be happy if you look at your neighbour and make yourself sick with jealousy.

You don’t need a castle of your own when you have that view, the view is the best part! And I would not want to live in the castle even if I could – too much to clean!

In time, my wife became much more than my wife – she became my best friend. Love saved me. My family saved me. Here is what I learned. Happiness does not fall from the sky; it is in your hands. Happiness comes from inside yourself and from the people you love. And if you are healthy and happy, you are a millionaire.

WE COULD NOT STAY IN BELGIUM. I WAS still technically a refugee and had to reapply to stay every six months. We were very happy there, but you cannot build a life six months at a time. Kurt had moved to Israel with his wife, and my sister moved to Australia, married and started a family. I made two applications, one to Australia and one to France. In March 1950, I got a permit to live and work in Australia.

The trip cost 1000 pounds for us all, paid by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a Jewish humanitarian organisation also known as the Joint. I promised to pay it back and did so the moment I could. They were very surprised, and said not many people paid the money back, but I wanted to. If they had that money, it could be used to help someone else, as I had been helped.

Not too long after we arrived, I was at a hotel in Botany, socialising with some friends from work, and a man named Walter Rook came up to me, told me I looked new to the country, and asked if I was looking to buy a house. He said he had some land in Brighton-Le-Sands, very close to the beach, where he was building two identical houses. Would I like to buy one? I told him I did not have enough money, and he told me that this wasn’t a problem – he would help me to secure credit and establish myself in Australia.

Eleven months after we moved in, Flore’s mother, who I loved very dearly, came from Belgium to Australia to live with us, and we built an extra room on the house to accommodate her. She, too, flourished in Australia, establishing herself as a dressmaker, and accumulating a clientele of some very glamorous Sydney women. Ladies sought her out from all over the city because there were so few European dressmakers.

In 1956, I passed the Coogee Hotel, and they were remodelling, throwing out all the bar and panelling. I bought it all for next to nothing and installed it in my home, so I had a wonderful pub in my own home! And from the bar itself, I made two desks for my sons. I began to think of Australia as the working man’s paradise. I could not believe the opportunities Australia provided.

Although I had little experience with cars, I knew I could adapt my engineering skills, and obtained a job with a company that specialised in fixing Holdens. With my affinity for machines, I quickly learned how to repair and maintain cars. Now and again I would encounter something I did not understand, so I’d take the service manual into the toilet with me to secretly learn how to fix the problem! By the mid fifties, I had enough experience to set out on my own, and so we bought a service station in Botany Road in Mascot. We hung up a sign: ‘Eddie’s Service Station’. Flore and I worked as a team – I fixed the cars, she served petrol, pumped tyres, looked after the staff, sold spare parts and kept the books. In a few years we built up the business until we employed a whole team of auto-professionals providing repairs, panel beating, auto-electrics, and even a new car showroom selling Renault vehicles.

I had learned early in life that we are all part of a larger society and our work is our contribution to a free and safe life for all. If I went to a hospital and saw instruments that I had made and knew that they were being used every day to make life better, this gave me great happiness. The same is true of every job you do. Are you a teacher? You enrich the lives of young people every day! Are you a chef? Each meal you cook brings great pleasure into the world! Perhaps you do not love your job, or you work with difficult people. You are still doing important things, contributing your own small piece to the world we live in. We must never forget this. Your efforts today will affect people you will never know. It is your choice whether that effect is positive or negative. You can choose every day, every minute, to act in a way that may uplift a stranger, or else drag them down. The choice is easy. And it is yours to make.