Last Stop Auschwitz

An Auschwitz prisoner's remarkable account of suffering and survival, widely thought to be the only complete book written inside the camp itself.

'How much I learned from this brave man... The ultimate Holocaust testimony.' HEATHER MORRIS, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Cilka's Journey

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. 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. Finding a notebook and pencil, 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 - passing notes through the fence, sometimes stealing a brief embrace. 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. Thought to be the only complete book written within Auschwitz itself, it will linger with you long after the final page has been turned.

[About the Author]
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. In late 1944, the Russians were closing in on the camp and the Germans set about destroying it, taking with them all prisoners who were still mobile – including Friedel, who was removed in January 1945. De Wind stayed in the camp, hid under a barracks, was liberated by the Russians and became a doctor in the Red Army. While still in the camp, he found a notebook and began writing Last Stop Auschwitz. After returning to Holland in the summer of 1945, de Wind 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. As far as is known, it is the only complete book written in Auschwitz itself.