The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku

 

Summary (from the publisher): Life can be beautiful if you make it beautiful. It is up to you.

Eddie Jaku always considered himself a German first, a Jew second. He was proud of his country. But all of that changed in November 1938, when he was beaten, arrested and taken to a concentration camp.

Over the next seven years, Eddie faced unimaginable horrors every day, first in Buchenwald, then in Auschwitz, then on a Nazi death march. He lost family, friends, his country.

Because he survived, Eddie made the vow to smile every day. He pays tribute to those who were lost by telling his story, sharing his wisdom and living his best possible life. He now believes he is the 'happiest man on earth'.

Published as Eddie turns 100, this is a powerful, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful memoir of how happiness can be found even in the darkest of times.

Review: I'm not sure how my review can do justice do the heartbreak of Eddie Jaku's story, nor can I in good conscious even consider giving it less than 5 stars. Eddie endured incredible hardship, suffering, and loss at the hands of the Nazis and in this book, bears witness for those that did not survive. 

Eddie was "lucky" in that his father made sure he was trained as a mechanical engineer and it was his skills with machinery that ultimately kept him from being put to death in the camps. Yet he was still starved, beaten, worked in bitter cold, and had to go on after his family were all killed. 

I will say, of all the many Holocaust memoirs and histories I have read, this was the most uplifting. Eddie had such a profoundly positive spin on his story. In the camps, Eddie learned that the "human body is the greatest machine every made, but it cannot run without spirits." But, where there is life, there is hope. Jaku believes firmly that happiness comes from within yourself and it is this indomitable spirit that gave him the courage to survive. Even after the war, he felt robbed of his health, his family, his country and floundered but never gave up, relentlessly determined to find a reason to smile every day. 

This is not a super sophisticated narrative. It reads like someone sitting by your side, telling you about the darkest horrors of their past. I loved that he calls the reader his friend. This felt deeply personal because it is. This simple, straight forward writing worked so well on audio, which was beautifully narrated. 

Stars: 5