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Writer's pictureExpat Scribe

What Is the Secret to Happiness?

Updated: Sep 27, 2023

101-year-old Holocaust Survivor Eddie Jaku Revealed the Magic Formula


“Happiness is the only thing in the world that doubles each time you share it. It does not fall from the sky. It’s in your hands. If you’re healthy and happy, you’re a millionaire. Happiness also brings good health to the body and mind. I attribute my (101 years of) health mostly to a positive and happy attitude.”
Silhouette of a man rejoicing with his arms raised to a fuchsia sky
One person's triumph over hatred is another's hope uplifted.

This is the incredible life story of Eddie Jaku, a Jew who survived the Holocaust despite being tortured and thrown into several concentration camps in different countries throughout World War II. He lost his home, his country, his freedom, millions of his fellow Jews, and most of his family.


From 1933, when Hitler launched his world domination, to the end of the war in 1945, Eddie stared death in the face every day. Because he survived, he made a vow to himself to smile and be happy every day. He made it his mission in life to encourage people to be happy.


But then, if he had endured so much hardship, how did he get to his happy place? Let’s find out.


A bird perched on barbed wire with a bug in its beak
The strong preying on the weak is prevalent in the animal kingdom—with humans leading the pack.

What would you do if your supposed compatriots stormed into your bedroom at dawn, tortured you half to death, then killed your dog and demolished your house right in front of you?


And how would you react if, after all that, they sent your entire family to a concentration camp where they forced you to work for free and gassed your parents behind your back? Wouldn’t you be just a trifle enraged?

It may seem inconceivable, like something that only happens in the movies, but all those horrendous things did happen to Eddie Jaku in real life. He was a recipient of the most evil acts one human being could do to another. He also witnessed firsthand the horrors foisted on his fellow detainees in Nazi-run internment camps.

As Eddie recalled those excruciating experiences, he also remembered how he felt: ”I lost my dignity, freedom, and faith in humanity. I lost everything I lived for. I was reduced from a man to being nothing. What happened to the country I was born in—the nation that produced Schiller, Goethe, Beethoven, and Mozart?”

And yet, decades later, after having undergone the requisite mourning period of a few years to process all that devastation, Eddie claimed he hated no one, not even Hitler. “Hate is a disease which may destroy your enemy but will also destroy you in the process.”

He never sought vengeance and instead viewed being alive (for 101 years) and staying happy as the sweetest form of revenge.


Two Gerbera daisies, pink and yellow, framed by broken glass

Can you believe it? Only a saint can do that. After all, the definition of a saint is an ordinary person who does extraordinary things.


Still, Eddie did not claim to be anything except “the happiest man on earth.”


But how could anyone who endured those horrific events even have an inkling of joy left? That’s where triumph of the spirit comes in.

Here, we go down memory lane (with respect) to trace how Eddie claimed victory over hatred.

The Early Years

Eddie Jaku was born Abraham Salomon Jakubowicz in Leipzig (east-central Germany) on April 14, 1920, to Polish-born dad Isidore and mom Lina. His nickname was Adi, later anglicized to Eddie.

A map of continental Europe focused on Germany
The nation that initially welcomed the Jakus but gave them heartache in the end

He was proud of his birthplace. He grew up thinking of it as “the world’s most civilized, educated, cultural country.”


He viewed himself as “a German first and a Jew at home.” His grandfather and two uncles died fighting for Germany.


Eddie was the only Jewish student at his local school. But he wasn’t discriminated against because he was “always German first.” However, when Hitler came to power in 1933, the year he turned 13, the administration expelled him from secondary school for being a Jew.

Predicting Persecution

During World War I, Jaku’s dad Isidore was interned for being an illegal alien because, although he had migrated to Germany, he was found traveling on a Polish passport on the way back from his apprenticeship in America. However, he was freed because of his background in mechanical engineering. Later, the Germans used his expertise in manufacturing weaponry.


Assuming that the burgeoning anti-Semitism would one day escalate into more serious ramifications, Isidore decided to equip his son for what lay ahead. Since it was his craft that saved him during the war, he figured the industry would do the same for Eddie in the future.


So he arranged for Eddie to be educated in a different district under a fake German name, Walter Schleif, a supposed orphan.


Walter was a real German boy who went missing much earlier. As Isidore was well-connected, he was able to secure the kid’s identification cards on the sly.

German IDs then had embossments detectable only by a specific type of infrared light. However, as Isidore used to be an apprentice for the American typewriter manufacturer Remington, he knew how to make the necessary “alterations.”

A vintage typewriter by Remington
Isidore's apprenticeship with Remington Typewriters came in handy.

So teenage Eddie studied for five years at Jeter und Shearer Mechanical Engineering College in Tuttlingen, then the hub of technological advances in precision mechanics and medical technology. He graduated in 1938, an expert toolmaker. He decided to stay in the city longer because he got a job creating precision medical instruments.

The Night of Broken Glass

November 9, 1938, was a turning point for 18-year-old Eddie. It was also the beginning of a living nightmare that would last 12 years. He considered what he did that day as the biggest mistake of his life.


It was his parents’ 20th wedding anniversary, so he went home to Leipzig to surprise them. Unknown to him, Nazi troops were rounding up Jews for detention, so by the time he arrived in his hometown, his family had already gone into hiding.


He walked into an empty family home, save for his dachshund Lulu. He went to sleep without seeing anyone. But at 5 am on November 10, Nazis burst into his room and did unmentionable things to him. The experience was so horrendous that he believed he was going to die.


They spared his life but made him watch as they destroyed his family’s 200-year-old house and killed Lulu when she lunged at a perpetrator who tried to carve a swastika onto Eddie’s arm with his bayonet. Then they took him to Buchenwald concentration camp.


Eddie realized afterward that fateful night of atrocities was part of Kristallnacht (literally translated as “night of crystal”)—anti-Semitic riots that occurred over two days (November 9 and 10) as a reaction to the murder of a German official by a teenage Polish Jew who was upset with the government for deporting his family out of Germany.

A broken window with a multicolored halo shining through it
Kristallnacht was named after the shards of glass from the broken windows that littered the streets.

Violent mobs, egged on by racist incitement from Nazi officials, destroyed and looted Jewish-owned homes, synagogues, and shops throughout Austria, Germany, and Czechia’s Sudetenland region.


Gestapo headquarters ordered police and fire departments to turn a blind eye. So no one stopped the destruction and mayhem. That was just the beginning. What was in store for Eddie was worse than death.

 

Gestapo is the abbreviation of “Geheime Staatspolizei” (meaning “Secret State Police”), Nazi Germany’s political police.

 

Concentration Camp Hopping

Eddie was sent to various concentration camps in different countries: one for being a Jew, two for being German, and one for being Polish and a Jew. The location changes were due to his repeated escaping, being recaptured, and camps abruptly shutting down depending on the situation at the war front.

Barracks surrounded by fences with barbed wire
Eddie went through a revolving door of internment camps.

These were the various locations where Eddie was incarcerated:

1) The concentration camp in Buchenwald, Germany, was his first. The Nazis kept him there with 11,000 other Jewish men for five months. They released him on May 2, 1939, so he could be a volunteer toolmaker in a factory. His father picked him up from the camp, pretending to take him to the factory. Instead, a runner smuggled them into Belgium.


2) Two weeks after arriving in Belgium, local police arrested him for being a German and interned him in a camp with 4,000 Germans. That camp was shut down on May 10, 1940, when the Nazis invaded Belgium, Denmark, France, Holland, and Norway.


3) When he escaped to France from Belgium, the French authorities in Lyon arrested him for being a German. (A washroom attendant found his German passport in his coat and thought he was a parachutist spy.)

They sent him to Gurs (an internment camp in southwestern France), where he spent seven months with 6,000 other Germans. At that time, Gurs was reserved mainly for French dissidents, political prisoners, and German Jews—whom the French regarded as “enemy aliens.”


Gurs, though primitive, was comfortable compared to the previous barracks because its camp bosses gave each prisoner one bed and three meals a day. But then, the French and German governments agreed on a prisoner barter wherein France released all the German Jews to Hitler in exchange for French political detainees.


Railroad tracks disappearing into the horizon
Eddie led fellow detainees to freedom by busting out of a prisoner train.

So Eddie and 34 of his fellow prisoners at Gurs were put on a train bound for Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. But nine of them, led by Eddie, never got there because they escaped through the floorboards of the train—thanks to three tools Eddie stole from the train platform.

4) When Eddie returned to Belgium, he reunited with his family and lived with them without incident for some time. Until police there deported the entire family to Poland because they considered the Jakus to be illegal aliens from that country. They were subsequently sent to Auschwitz.


The Horrors of Auschwitz

After Eddie’s escape from the train exiting Gurs and subsequent re-entry into Belgium, he got a secret job in a cigarette factory in Brussels through the help of a Christian sympathizer. Eddie, his parents, sister, and aunts rented an attic (albeit illegally) from another compassionate stranger. However, somebody squealed on the Jakus. So on October 18, 1943, Belgian authorities arrested the entire family. That was how they ended up in Auschwitz.


It was there where Eddie found out about the industrial killing of Jews with poison gas, including his parents. At that time, his mom was only 43, and his dad, 52. He learned that it took 20 minutes for them to suffocate in the gas chambers.


It was at Auschwitz where Eddie experienced sleeping on wooden planks. He and 400 other male prisoners had to sleep side-by-side, 10 to a row, without blankets, mattresses, heat, clothes, or spaces between them. Their captors forced them to sleep naked, so they could not escape.

However, the inmates devised a system by which they rotated their positions on the slabs to generate warmth for those sleeping at the outer corners. The men at both ends had a chance to move to the middle whenever somebody went to the washroom.


It was the duty of whoever went to pee to shake the men at the outer edges of the row to make sure they were still alive and so they could move inward. But not everyone was conscientious with this task, so at sub-zero temperatures, many died.


Eddie recalled that in Auschwitz, 1,500 were killed every hour.

 

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s records state that 1.1 million Jews died in Auschwitz—part of the 6 million who died in the Holocaust. They made up two-thirds of the Jewish population in Europe. Other ethnic groups made up the additional 14 million who perished during that period as a result of Hitler’s genocide.

 

A numbered plaque attached to a fence with barbed wire
Prisoner numbers are constant reminders of unimaginable hardship for Holocaust survivors.

Indelible Ink

At the camp, Eddie’s captors tattooed him and all the detainees with serial numbers. His was 172338, which he revealed years later on the cover photo of his memoir. He said that with those digits, the Nazis sentenced him to a slow death, but not before they attempted to kill his spirit.



Eddie tried having the tattoo removed, but it was branded in such a way that the ink permeated three layers of the dermis, deeply embedding it into the flesh. Some female Holocaust survivors had theirs removed through skin grafting, but the ink resurfaced after five years!


So to Eddie, the number was a constant, irksome reminder of the loss of his parents and the brutalities he witnessed during his 15 months in Auschwitz.


Death Before Torture

At Auschwitz, Eddie witnessed people either dying from hunger, cold, maltreatment, torture, or suicide. Every night, up to 20 people died from hypothermia. Some killed themselves by purposely running into the electrified fences. For them, it was better to die than to be tortured further by the enemy. The inmates called these hapless folks “people who have gone to the wire.”

An hourglass with red sand placed on newsprint
An hour’s rest is worth two days of survival.

At one point, Eddie considered joining them but was dissuaded by his friend Kurt Hirschfeld, a young German Jew from Berlin, and Dr. Kinderman from Nice, France, who extracted a bullet from Eddie’s leg with a letter-opener after a breakout attempt. The latter appealed to Eddie’s analytical mind by telling him that an hour’s rest is worth two days of survival.


So Eddie told himself, “If I could survive one more day, an hour, a minute, the pain would end and tomorrow would come.” He vowed that if he survived, he would live each day to the max, dedicating the rest of his life to eradicating Hitler’s legacy, and making the world a better place—as his mom would have wanted.

Mother and daughter engaged in conversation
If you still can, tell your mother you love her.

He regretted that he wasn’t able to say goodbye to his mom, whom he missed terribly. In his TEDx talk, he urged everyone whose mother is still alive: “If you have the opportunity, tell your mother you love her. Do this for your mother… and do it for your new friend, Eddie, who cannot tell it to his mother.”


As his sister Johanna (nicknamed Henni) was separated from the family, Eddie assumed she died. Unknown to him, Henni, who was interned in another part of Auschwitz, survived. Brother and sister were reunited many years later.

How He Survived

Eddie’s father Isidore was right. What saved him in World War I saved his son in World War II: precision mechanical skills. It pained Isidore to send his 13-year-old son miles away to engineering college and learn of him suffering from loneliness. However, he assured Eddie, “Son, I know it’s difficult, but one day, you will thank me.”

Eddie survived because his Nazi captors classified him as an “economically indispensable Jew.” Their “selection” process only had two categories: those who got to live and those who didn’t.


It was either the labor camp or the trucks. Be sent to the former, you work for the Nazis without pay. Ride the latter, you get poisoned with gas. Those belonging to the “truck category” were adults over 50 and children under 13—people the captors didn’t have any use for, since they were too weak for slave labor or couldn’t economically contribute to the war effort.

The Den of the Evil Doctors

Eddie was forced to work temporarily at Monowitz, the headquarters of the industrial sub-camps in Auschwitz for compulsory laborers of Interessengemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG (better known these days as Bayer—Big Pharma that gave the world both aspirin and heroin).


Back then, IG Farben was the world’s largest chemical and pharmaceutical cartel that produced dyes, synthetic rubber, liquid fuel, and medications. It also patented Zyklon B (aka Cyclone B), a cyanide-based fumigating pesticide whose gas byproduct was used to kill Jews in the camps—including Eddie’s parents.

 

Interestingly, Fritz Haber, a German Jew chemist, whose patriotism for Germany superseded the moral question, created the prototype for Cyclone B: Cyclone A. Despite his loyalty, his fellow Germans booted him out of his beloved laboratories. Devastated, he quit his job, exiled himself, and went into cardiac arrest in 1934.

 

At Monowitz, Eddie was appointed workshop foreman, supervising the air pipe maintenance of 200 army supply machines, each of which had one inmate assigned to it.


He found out later that one of those 200 workers was his sister, who was housed in the women’s section of Birkenau, the second major camp of the Auschwitz complex. However, they had to communicate in secret because if their captors found out they were related, they could get in trouble. So he couldn’t even hug her to offer comfort over the death of their parents.

Medical instruments laid out on a blue sheet
Eddie was forced to make surgical instruments for Dr. Mengele.

Two months of his stay at that sub-camp was spent working for Dr. Josef Mengele (aka the Angel of Death), notorious for conducting unsanctioned medical experiments on Jewish camp prisoners. Mengele asked Eddie to create surgical instruments, which were presumably used on his test subjects.


Another high-ranking SS officer and top neurosurgeon, Professor Neubert, asked him to design a special operating table to be used for neurosurgery.


This was after Eddie saw Neubert working with a complicated machine at the camp hospital and he shouted out to the surgeon that he knew how to make and repair it. Neubert was astonished and impressed that a Jew knew the name of such proprietary and complex equipment.


Little did he know that Eddie used to study at the epicenter of medical technology.

 

Incidentally, Mengele never stood trial for his war crimes, despite being hunted down by both the West German and Israeli governments, the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, and Nazi hunters. Instead, he died drowning at sea due to a stroke in São Paulo, Brazil. He was buried under the name of Wolfgang Gerhard, a fellow Nazi party member in exile.

SS stands for Schutzstaffel, the Nazi party’s paramilitary organization, secret police, and Hitler’s elite guards.

 

Survival Tactics

Two potatoes with a quote superimposed on a black background
Eddie bartered potatoes with interned doctors to survive.

As Eddie was forced to work unpaid, he asked for extra food in exchange. Those medical personnel also worked but were paid in raw potatoes (four pieces for a day’s work). As they couldn’t eat those uncooked, Eddie saw an opportunity.

He had access to the kitchen and a discarded pot he previously repaired. So he made an exchange deal with the doctors, wherein they gave him one potato for every four he boiled for them. This was just one example of the many strategies he did to survive.

Despite the (necessary) underhandedness, however, Eddie never hurt another prisoner nor stole from him. In fact, he went out of his way to help anyone whenever he could.


“I never lost sight of what it was to be civilized,” he professed. “I knew that there would be no point surviving if I had to become an evil man to do it. There is no medicine for (the loss of) morals. If your morals are gone, you lose yourself.”


It is important to note that a lot of Germans got posted in jobs (that involved hurting or killing Jews) unwillingly. Many of them were sympathetic. Several guards and factory managers, for instance, helped Eddie and fellow prisoners by sneaking in food or offering medical assistance.

However, their efforts had to be carried out discreetly. If they got caught by superiors, colleagues, collaborators, or snitches, they would be punished or killed.

The Value of Friendship

When Eddie was working for Dr. Mengele, he questioned his faith: “If there had been a God, there would have been no Auschwitz.” But he believed in friendship because of his buddy Kurt Hirschfeld, who prevented him from killing himself. Eddie credited Kurt for their survival in Auschwitz.

Four friends gazing at the sunrise with arms linked
“Shared sorrow is half sorrow. Shared pleasure is double pleasure.”

“Having even just one good friend means that the world takes on new meaning. One good friend can be your entire world,” Eddie enthused. “Friendship is the best balm for the soul.”


He added, “The human body is the greatest machine ever made, but it cannot run without the spirit. We can live a few weeks without food, a few days without water, but without hope and faith in others, we will fail and break down. So that was how we survived: through friendship, cooperation, and hope.”


After the war, the two friends and Eddie’s sister Henni were reunited in Belgium.


Eddie’s friendship with Kurt lasted their entire lives until the latter’s demise. Both of them got married in Belgium in 1946. Kurt and his wife later moved to Israel, while Eddie and his wife migrated to Australia in 1950. The two pals kept in touch through the years and even met up in person a few times.

How He Escaped

It seemed fate kept yanking Eddie out of death’s door. He was able to escape from different camps and death marches several times.

A pocket watch with chain on crumpled newspaper
Eddie was thrice saved in the nick of time from the gas chambers.

The death march was called as such because when camp prisoners collapsed (out of hunger, illness, exposure to the elements, or exhaustion from prolonged walking), their captors made them open their mouths, pointed their guns into them, and pulled the trigger.


Eddie was even extracted from gas chambers at the last minute on three separate occasions. It was in those instances where his prisoner number came in handy and literally saved him. A supervisor saw the number on his uniform, connected it to his status as an indispensable Jew, and immediately yanked him out of the incineration line.


In January 1945, the Russians were poised to free Poland’s German-occupied territories, including Auschwitz. So the Nazis hastened to move the camp’s prisoners, including Eddie and Kurt, to Buchenwald in another death march. The two escaped but were separated. The Nazis recaptured Eddie and sent him back to Buchenwald, where he repaired armament gearboxes.

A cave with light streaming from a crevice above
Eddie's sanctuary was a cave in the Black Forest.

But then, the Nazis had to transport the prisoners again; this time, to one of Buchenwald’s satellite branches. Eddie was put on another death march. He escaped into the Black Forest, where he hid in a cave, surviving only on a diet of snails and slugs. He contracted typhoid and cholera from drinking contaminated water from a nearby creek.

In June 1945, he managed to haul himself onto a highway just as an American tank was passing by. When the soldiers found him, he was severely underweight, malnourished, and close to death from hunger and disease. Doctors predicted only a 35% chance of survival.

Eddie recalled, “At that moment, I made a promise to God that if I lived, I would become an entirely new person.” He vowed he would never set foot in Germany again—the country that had given him everything then taken it back.


“I promised I would dedicate the rest of my life to putting right the hurt that had been done to the world by the Nazis, and that I would live every day to the fullest.”


And that’s when he recovered.

The Post-War Years

After his rescue and recovery from illness, Eddie returned to Belgium in 1945. There, he met Flore Molho, a Belgian Jew. They fell in love at a Brussels town hall where Eddie was collecting food stamps and Flore was distributing rations.


During the war, she lived in Paris under an assumed name. When she returned to her country, she decided to help the survivors of the prison camps who sought help from the Belgian government.

An elderly woman gazing at an old framed wedding photo
Eddie and Flore intentionally got married on Hitler's birthday to defy him.

In 1946, the two got married and deliberately chose April 20, Hitler’s birthday, for their wedding date—their act of defiance.


Eddie’s advice for couples planning to get married: “Be prepared to compromise a lot and let your partner have the last word... sometimes.”


Despite the happy marital union, Eddie spent a few post-war years disillusioned and desolate. He didn’t enjoy being with people. However, when their son Michael was born, his “heart healed” and “happiness returned in abundance.”

The Shift Down Under

After four years of living in Belgium, Eddie realized it was not convenient to stay there permanently because, as a refugee, he had to renew his papers every six months to keep living there.


In the meantime, his sister Henni had gotten married and moved to Australia. So it made sense to follow her there—although he had also applied to migrate to France.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, a Jewish humanitarian organization, paid for their fare Down Under, gratis. They were astonished when Eddie paid them back because he was the only refugee who bothered to repay them. He explained that with the reimbursement, the committee could help another family.

Eddie and family initially stayed with the Skorupas, his paternal cousins, who had been living in Sydney for some time. Eddie found work right away, making medical instruments and machines for Elliot Brothers. After they had settled in, Eddie and Flore’s second son, Andre, was born. Flore’s mom also joined them from Belgium and came to live with them.

Eddie (with Flore’s support) delivered talks about his experiences during the war. Flore’s mom made a living as a tailor. Her clients were part of Sydney’s high society. The couple ran a gas service station and auto showroom where Eddie also created and sold precision instruments.


After they sold the station in 1966, they set up a real estate agency, E. Jaku Real Estate. They retired from the industry in their 90s and went to live in Montefiore, an assisted living facility, to address Flore’s medical needs.


In 2021, Eddie turned 101. Flore was 97. They had been married for 75 years then. Apart from Michael and Andre, they have grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Eddie appreciating his birthday cake at a party thrown for him by friends
Eddie turned 101 years old in 2021.

His Pledge to the World

Eddie said that even though much time had passed, it was still very painful to tell his story. However, as one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors still alive then, he also realized that when he and the rest would die, their stories might fade from history.

Their demise, which means the end of their story impartation, will benefit the neo-Nazis and others who deny the Holocaust ever existed.

During those post-war years in Belgium, Eddie wondered why he didn’t die during the war. But then, he realized he was still alive because he had a responsibility to speak about the Holocaust and a duty to help educate the world about the dangers of hate.


It took three decades before Eddie could rack up the courage to talk about his experiences during World War II. He wanted to spare his children, Michael and Andre, the pain of knowing what happened to him. Only as adults did they hear about their dad’s ordeals through the talks he gave on stage.


In 1972, Eddie met 20 other Holocaust survivors in Australia, who convinced him of the value of sharing Holocaust survivors’ stories. They realized it wasn’t just talk therapy but also a duty. This led to the creation of the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants and the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) in 1992.

The association’s primary objective was to preserve the accounts of their Holocaust experience so that their suffering and the deaths of their compatriots wouldn’t be in vain.


True to his wartime promises to himself decades ago, Eddie continued to inform younger generations about the Holocaust, so the world would not forget what happened. At the same time, he wanted to spread the message of positivity and the cultivation of happiness in the face of adversity.

Eddie lived what he taught: “Whenever I wake up, I am happy because it’s another day to enjoy. I remember when I was at the bottom of the pit. I could have died a miserable death, but I am alive. So I aim to help people who are down. If I can make one miserable person smile, that is a victory.”


Eddie had been volunteering at the SJM since it opened on November 18, 1992. Five years before, he was a regular speaker in events for the Jewish Board of Deputies. He emphasized to his audience “the obligation to remember and honor but not to hate.”

Accolades

The book jacket of Eddie's memoir
A fitting tribute to Eddie’s 100th year on earth: his book

According to J-Wire, the digital Jewish news daily for Australia and New Zealand, Eddie received the OAM (Order of Australia medal, one of the country’s highest honors) in 2013.


When he turned 100 in 2020, he was a finalist for the New South Wales “Senior Australian of the Year.”


Also, Pan Macmillan published his autobiography, The Happiest Man on Earth. It is based on the outline of his 2019 TEDx speech in Sydney, plus his previous other talks.


Takeaway

What can we learn from Eddie Jaku? He proved that a person could live without hatred despite having gone through considerable tragedy and intolerable cruelty.


His life story is proof that the human spirit is capable of rising above adversity and still have enough warmth and love to spread around. Eddie and his memoir are powerful testaments to Hitler’s failure to annihilate the Jewish spirit.


Eddie and his fellow Holocaust survivors found hope and peace even in the bleakest of times. In our darkest moments, can we do the same?

Editor’s Note:

We bring to mind what Eddie said when his faith in God wavered: “If there had been a God, there would have been no Auschwitz.”

This is because many people ask a variation of the same question whenever they are suffering, such as,“If there really is a God, why is there so much poverty, homelessness, crime, war, natural disasters, and pandemics in the world?”


Most humans in the midst of despondence wonder why God (the universe/the Supreme Being/Higher Power) allows terrible things to happen, even to good people.


We invite rabbis and other religious leaders to please answer this universal question and comment on it. We ask you to refute what Eddie said, if only to give hope to those who are suffering and encourage them to keep on surviving. People don’t just need consolation, they require an explanation.

Thank you.

 

If you would like to comment on this article—or give constructive criticism, make suggestions, share your story, or be a contributor to our blog, please do so using this contact form. We keep our readers’ information private. Thank you in advance for your contribution.

 

Expat Scribe, the writer of this article, is also the author of the psychological techno-thriller, “The Invisible Cyber Bully: What it’s like to be watched 24/7.”

3D renderings of The Invisible Cyber Bully book in tablet, smartphone, and print edition formats
The Invisible Cyber Bully is available on Amazon in ebook and print edition formats.

This novel tackles the surreptitious bullying and illegal surveillance, DNA-extraction, psychological torture of, and experimentation on ordinary citizens by law enforcers, scientific laboratories, various “hidden” associations, and global authorities. Some chapters discuss the garden-variety bully from schools and neighborhoods. The book also features a primer on how to fight cyber bullying.


 

Sources:

Photo Credits:

  • Main photo (silhouette)—Rakicevic Nenad

  • Bird on a wire—Ed Peeters

  • Daisies—Brigitte/ArtTower

  • Map of Continental Europe including Germany—Pixabay

  • Remington typewriter—Pixabay

  • Broken window—Pixabay

  • Barracks—Pixabay

  • Railroad tracks—Brigitte/ArtTower

  • Prisoner number—Isabella Mendes

  • Hourglass—Nile

  • Mother and daughter—Andrea Piacquadio

  • Medical instruments—Cedric Fauntleroy

  • Potatoes—Bruno Cervera

  • Friends—Helena Lopes

  • Pocket watch—Brigitte/ArtTower

  • Cave—Tsvetoslav Hristov

  • Vintage wedding photo—Luizph

  • Eddie’s birthday photo—Josh Frydenberg

  • Eddie’s book jacket—Pan Macmillan Australia gave us permission to publish this cover.


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