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Much has been said and written about the horrors at the concentration camps and the crimes that took place across Europe during the Holocaust. A number of writers have shared their experiences of the camps during the Second World War, but Last Stop Auschwitz: My Story of Survival from Within the Camp by Eddy de Wind is believed to be the only book written from inside a concentration camp.
De Wind was the last Jewish doctor to graduate from Leiden University in the Netherlands, before the German occupiers began forcing Dutch universities to exclude Jewish students and faculty. He volunteered to work at Westerbork a transit camp for the deportation of Jews in north-eastern Netherlands as he was told that his mother, who had earlier been taken to Westerbork, would be exempted from deportation in exchange for his work. However, at the camp, he found out that she had already been sent to Auschwitz. While working at Westerbork, he met Friedel, a nurse, and soon they got married. The c
The Son of a Holocaust Survivor Remembers
Melcher de Wind, my distant cousin, has mixed feelings about “
herdenkings,” or commemorations. To him, Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021 marks the end of a year full of commemorations of the Holocaust and his beloved father, Eddy de Wind, who wrote his memoir in real-time during the 16 months he spent in Nazi captivity during World War II just because he was a Jew.
One year ago, Melcher’s family published “Last Stop Auschwitz: My Story of Survival from Within the Camp,” a book of those memoirs translated for the first time into English and now into 30 other languages. For the family, this Holocaust Remembrance Day will be a time to reflect on the emotions, doubts and heart-searching they have experienced in deciding to publish the book and, subsequently, in attending “