Last Stop Auschwitz My Story of Survival from Within the Camp

Auschwitz survivor Eddy de Wind provides a minute-by-minute true account from his journal of fighting for his life at the largest extermination camp in Nazi Germany, with an award-winning translator.


''We know that there is only one ending to this, only one liberation from this barbed wire hell: death.'' --Eddy de Wind




In 1943, amidst the start of German occupation, Eddy de Wind worked as a doctor at Westerbork, a Dutch transit camp. His mother had been taken to this camp by Nazis but Eddy was assured by the Jewish Council she would be freed in exchange for his labor. He later found out she'd already been transferred to Auschwitz.




While at Westerbork, he fell in love with a woman named Friedel and they married. The young couple was forced to share a room with cardboard walls with another pair until, one year later, they were transported to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, Friedel and Eddy were separated--Eddy to work as the camp's doctor, and Friedel at the mercy of the Nazis, facing regular experimentation and sexual assault. While they were able to be in contact sporadically, Eddy longed for the day he could be free with Friedel, and by some miracle they both survived among the 1.1 million that didn't make it out alive.




In this poignant, moving account of Eddy's life during the Holocaust translated from Dutch, he provides unparalleled access to the atrocities faced in the camp. He doesn't just write about the horrors of the camp, but analyzes, philosophizes, and observes the kind of behavior--both good and evil--people are capable of. Through raw prose and photographs from his childhood, the camp is described in detail like never documented before.