Last Stop Auschwitz
Read an extract
Play sample
  • Published: 29 September 2020
  • ISBN: 9781784164980
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99

Last Stop Auschwitz

My story of survival from within the camp

Formats & editions
Paperback
29 Sep 2020
EBook
9 Jan 2020
Audiobook
9 Jan 2020
Buy from…
Amazon Big W Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Your Bookstore Abbeys Find local retailers Find local retailers Boomerang Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Mighty Ape

An Auschwitz prisoner's remarkable account of suffering and survival, an international bestseller and the only complete book written inside the camp.

Eddy de Wind, a Dutch doctor and psychiatrist, was shipped to Auschwitz with his wife Friedel in 1943. 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. As the end of the war approached the Nazis fled, taking many prisoners with them. Eddy hid under a pile of old clothes and stayed behind. Finding a notebook and pencil, he began to write with furious energy about his experiences. Last Stop Auschwitz is the result - an extraordinary account of life as a prisoner, a near real-time record of the 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.
  • Published: 29 September 2020
  • ISBN: 9781784164980
  • Imprint: Black Swan
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $22.99
Categories:

About the author

Eddy de Wind

Eddy de Wind (1916–1987) was the last Jewish doctor to graduate from Leiden University in the Netherlands during World War Two. He volunteered to work at the Westerbork labour camp under the false impression that his mother, who had been taken by the Germans, would be saved from deportation. There, he met and married his first wife, Friedel. The couple was deported to Auschwitz in 1943.

De Wind returned to Holland in the summer of 1945 and specialized as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. In 1949 he published ‘Confrontation with Death’, his famous article in which he introduced the idea of concentration-camp syndrome. Last Stop Auschwitz was published in Dutch in February 1946 and in English for the first time in 2020. As far as is known, it is the only complete book written in Auschwitz itself.

portrait photo of Eddy de Wind

Praise for Last Stop Auschwitz

An extraordinary account of De Wind's life as a prisoner

Bookseller, Editor's Choice

Never have I had to stop reading and sit and stare at the wall - the words of Eddy dug deep into my heart, and I felt a physical pain as I connected to his suffering and the suffering of others he described... How much I learned from this brave man.

HEATHER MORRIS, author of THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ and CILKA'S JOURNEY

Hopeful and haunting.

The i

Has an urgency and intensity which makes it unique.

Irish Times

Last Stop Auschwitz, with its many details, written at speed and with all the immediacy that comes with describing events still alive and raw in the mind, is a valuable addition to the vast literature on the Holocaust.

The Tablet