The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor
By: Eddie Jaku / Narrated By: Raphael Corkhill
Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins
Less contemplative than Frankl, but oh, that smiling!
While both my parents inspired a love of reading in me, each indelibly left their imprint on my psyche about what I find compelling. My dad? WWII. My mom, on the other hand? The Holocaust. As one of the books I read as a young adult, Children of the Holocaust, while in no way THE definitive book on the subject, caught my interest, it truly bemused and moved me about what it might be like to grow up as children of people who suffered grievously. Within that book of intergenerational trauma was the nugget that all of the children featured within the pages, were named after friends and family members who died in the camps. Stunning, yes (But remember, not definitive of all out there). Heartbreaking memories the individuals had as children who walked on eggshells lest they cause their parents even more suffering, yes.
So while I didn’t think that book was the Be All/End All of experiences of the children, I certainly had it in my brain that the post-War experiences of the parents were, well, if not universal, certainly The Norm. I mean, there has indeed been the likes of Viktor Frankl, but certainly he was the Only One.
Not so, and DEFinitely not so with this extraordinary book by survivor Eddie Jaku who saw this, his book on Life and Happiness published when he was in his 100th year (He died in 2021 at 101-years of age).
The first part of the book, The Happiest Man on Earth, is a chronicle of his enTIRe journey from lad in a tense post-WWI Germany through to his eventual beating and arrest during the events of Kristallnacht. What follows is as brutal an account, as tortuous a journey as ever I’ve heard of Holocaust experiences. From life in the camps where the rare citizen extended a helping hand, giving him hope and perhaps just a single bit of food to get him to Another Day, all the way through the forced death marches that occurred in the final days of the Reich, where the Allies were closing in. The Nazis hoped to hide evidence of their crimes, but left the countryside littered with corpses of people who simply could not go another step and were executed, to those that quite simply died on their own. Jaku spares us not a single detail of the horrors, but interspersed through it all, his is careful to note with gratitude the bonds of friendship and/or perhaps the bittersweet sight of a sister, doing poorly and working in grueling conditions, but who had, despite the odds, survived. He is grateful, even as he notes that he daren’t speak to her, let alone embrace her, to mark her as extraordinary in any way.
Then the book morphs into his life post-War, of using skills obtained through education before the war and fine-honed during the war as he was labeled an essential-Jew. He finds love, marries, but at first, his experiences have marked him. He is unable to feel safe; he is unable to find joy. He’s a miserable curmudgeon. It’s not until he holds his newborn first son in his arms, feels the miracle, the joy, that he dedicates the rest of his life to smiling, to gratitude.
What follows are little lessons on various topics where he expounds upon how life might be lived to the fullest, and he gives how he came to such ideas. The body is an extraordinary vessel and shouldn’t be befouled with cigarettes, overindulgence, a lack of exercise? Because he’s seen what a miracle that body has been under the worst conditions, how with a little sustenance, imbued with Hope for Another Day, it can indeed make it from one day to the next.
Jaku never told his sons what he endured, but he felt driven to speak to audiences, to share his experiences. It was during one such talk that his eldest hid and listened, and was moved to tears. Funny how the need to share sometimes cannot be extended to one’s own family, but there you are. It happens even to prolific speakers. It brought the family closer, however.
Tho’ unreviewed by me as of yet, I’m not unfamiliar with narrator Raphael Corkhill. I was surprised to see him as the choice for narrator here as he’s distinctly, to my own ears at least from my experiences of hearing him before, British. I mean, European narrator, so Huzzah! and all that, but German? I needn’t have worried as Corkhill does indeed do the entirety of this audiobook in a dignified German accent, sounding like an older man who’s seen much, suffered much, survived much, and has gone on to the fullest most ALIVE existence possible. So HUZZAH!!!
When I was a Senior in high school, when coping skills that got me through childhood started to turn ugly and unsustainable, I unburdened all my woes to a Home Ec teacher. She took the time to write me a letter where she stated, and I never forgot this and have held on to my entire life: Happiness is a Choice, and it takes practice. Here, Eddie Jaku offers that sage wisdom throughout each and every minute of this not even 4-hour audiobook.
Gripping listening; compelling history. Simply put? A beautiful life, and you can feel the smiles that saw him through the worst and that kept him vibrant through to 101-years.
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