Last Stop Auschwitz: A timely translation of a Holocaust memoir
Book review: Eddy de Wind is a remarkable narrator who turns a trained scientific eye on the society around him
Eddy de Wind was born into a secular, middle-class Dutch family of Jewish descent, his route to Auschwitz was somewhat unusual
It could be asked: do we really need to read more Holocaust memoirs? And the answer is, we need them now more than ever. At their best, they lay bare the inner workings of our European societies, and reveal truths about crowds, power and the human capacity for evil which are still all too germane.
This English translation of Eddy de Wind’s book is timely. First published in Dutch in 1946, it was written in Auschwitz itself by the Dutch doctor and psychoanalyst, immediately after the camp’s liberation in January 1945. Scribbled down furiously in breaks between his work with the Red Army who had taken control of the camp, sitting on the edge of a wooden bunk in an Auschwitz barracks, it has an urgency and intensity which makes it unique.