Eddie Jaku
Author: Eddie Jaku
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Place of publication: Sydney
Year of Publication: 2020
Location of Book: Lamm Jewish Library, Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Sydney Jewish Museum and other public libraries.
Cities/town/camps: Germany: Leipzig, Tuttlingen, Buchenwald; Belgium: Brussels, Exarde refugee camp, Maline transit camp; France: Dunkirk, Lyon, Gurs; Poland: Auschwitz-Birkenau; Auschwitz III-Monowitz; Australia: Sydney.
Note: those cities/towns/camps underlined are those which are most central to the narrative.
Genre: Memoir
Key events/experiences: Kristallnacht; refugee; in-hiding; Dunkirk evacuation; concentration camp; death march.
The Happiest Man on Earth is the internationally acclaimed memoir of German-born survivor Eddie Jaku, who survived the horrors of Kristallnacht, incarceration in several concentration camps and two death marches before emigrating to Sydney where he built a new life. Despite the brutalisation he experienced at the hands of his countrymen, Eddie lived the remainder of his life championing a philosophy of beauty and happiness – which he put to pen at the age of 100.
The memoir is 195 pages in length and includes 18 photographs of Eddie’s life and family in pre-war Germany and post-war Australia. Pages 1-20 are devoted to the author’s childhood in Leipzig and life under Nazi rule. Pages 21-52 recount his arrest and deportation to Buchenwald on Kristallnacht, his subsequent flight to Belgium and France upon his release as well as his confinement in various internment camps from 1940-41. Pages 53-72 detail his escape from a transport in 1941, and his time in hiding with his family in Brussels until his arrest and deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau in February 1944. Pages 73-132 describe the author’s survival in Auschwitz and death march to Buchenwald. Pages 133-56 recount his escape from another death march, liberation and post-war life in Europe with pages 157-90 describing his emigration to and life in Australia. The final 5 pages present acknowledgements.
Eddie Jaku was born Abraham Saloman Jakubowicz on 14 April 1920 in Leipzig, Germany, to parents Isidore and Lina Jakubowicz. His friends called him Adi for short (pronounced Eddie in English). Eddie, and his younger sister, Henni, were raised in a highly assimilated, middle-class, German-Jewish family. Although his mother kept a kosher household, Eddie did not experience a strong connection to Judaism but was a proud German citizen.
In 1933, the year Eddie started high-school, Hitler came to power and Eddie was told he could no longer attend school as he was Jewish. Eddie’s father secured false papers and arranged for Eddie to be sent to a boarding school in Tuttlingen under the alias of Walter Schleif. There, Eddie studied mechanical engineering, graduating in 1938. On 9 November, Eddie decided to return home on his parent’s anniversary. This fateful visit was the night that would become known as Kristallnacht, a violent pogrom during which Nazi thugs destroyed thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues and brutalised innocents. When Eddie arrived, his family had already gone into hiding and the 18-year-old was alone except for the family’s dachshund, Lulu. At 5am, ten Nazis smashed down the door, viciously beat Eddie, killed Lulu and destroyed his family's 200-year-old home. He was then taken to Buchenwald concentration camp.
Eddie languished in Buchenwald for six months until, on 2 May 1939, an old boarding-school friend then working as a camp guard arranged for him to be taken to work in a factory. Eddie was released into his father’s care to be taken to the factory, who instead drove them to the Belgian border which they crossed by foot, reaching Brussels after several days. After only two weeks in Brussels, Eddie was arrested by the Belgian gendarmerie as an illegal German alien and placed in the Exarde refugee camp where he remained until May 1940, when Nazi Germany invaded, and the refugees were evacuated by the camp authorities to the coast to board a ship to England.
However, when they arrived the ship had already departed, leaving the refugees stranded. They then made a 10-hour journey to Dunkirk by foot – arriving in the middle of the legendary evacuation. In the chaos, Eddie was stranded again and decided to journey to the south in the hope of another means of escape. Walking on foot, he travelled for two-and-a-half months, living off the kindness of strangers. After arriving in Lyon, his German passport was discovered and Eddie was again arrested as a German alien and sent to the Gurs internment camp.
After seven months in Gurs, Eddie was sent on a transport to Germany. Before boarding, however, he stole several tools which he used to remove the floorboards of the train carriage and escape. He made the 400-kilometre journey back to Brussels where he reunited with his parents, sister and two aunts, who had found a hiding place in the attic of an elderly Catholic gentleman. Eddie remained in hiding with his family for eleven months, during which time his aunts were arrested and murdered after they left the apartment.
In late 1943, Belgian authorities arrested the rest of the family and deported them to a transit camp in Malines. In February 1944, they were sent on a nine-day transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where his parents were murdered on arrival. Along with his friend Kurt (whom Eddie had met in Buchenwald) Eddie survived selection and was sent to Auschwitz I-Monowitz (Buna), were he was forced to perform back-breaking labour in a bombed-out munitions depot and, later, a coal mine. Due to his engineering skills, Eddie secured a foreman position at an IG Farben factory, overseeing 200 high-pressure pipe machines and their operators – one of whom was his sister, Henni.
On 18 January 1945, as Soviet forces approached, Eddie was sent on a death march to Buchenwald and then to a smaller camp in Sonnenburg where he worked in a specialist machine shop for four months. On a subsequent march Eddie escaped and hid in a forest until rescued by American soldiers who took him to hospital. After six weeks recovery, Eddie returned to Brussels where he was reunited with Kurt and Henni. In early 1946, Eddie met his wife, Flore, a fellow survivor, and the couple were married in April. Two years later, their son Michael was born. In March 1950 Eddie’s family received landing permits for Australia, arriving in Sydney on 13 July, funded by the JOINT.
In Sydney, Eddie worked as a mechanic and was soon able to secure a home for his family. Flore’s mother joined them and the couple’s second child Andre, was born. In Australia, Eddie has spoken widely of his Holocaust experiences – serving as a volunteer at the Sydney Jewish Museum since its opening in 1992 until 2020. In 2013, he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal. In 2019, he gave a TEDx talk in Sydney which received a standing ovation, making his story of interest to an international publisher.
Written in a simple, intimate style, The Happiest Man on Earth is a chronicle of the author’s personal philosophy. Each chapter features an aphorism serving as a lesson to the reader on how to choose happiness and make life beautiful. As such, it focuses on historical episodes important for the author’s message and is not a detailed account of his Holocaust experiences, as such, but a life-affirming story of the triumphant power of good over evil.