'We know that there is only one ending to this, only one liberation from this barbed wire hell- death.' Eddy de Wind
In 1943 Eddy de Wind, a Dutch doctor and psychiatrist, was shipped to Auschwitz with his wife Friedel, whom he had met and married at the Westerbork labour camp. At Auschwitz, they made it through the brutal selection process and were put to work in the medical barracks. In their new life, each day, each hour became a battle for survival.
For de Wind, in his role as camp doctor, this meant negotiating the volatile guards. For Friedel, it meant avoiding Mengele's medical experiments and the threat of sexual assault. Despite all this, love prevailed. Passing notes through the wire, sometimes stealing a brief embrace, Friedel and Eddy clung to life.
As the last Nazis fled at the end of the war, de Wind hid himself in an abandoned barracks and began to write with furious energy about his experiences at Auschwitz. The result is an extraordinary account of life as a prisoner, a near real-time record of the daily struggle, stress and horror, but also of the flickering moments of joy de Wind and Friedel found in each other. It reveals the best and the worst of humanity, a reminder of what we as humans were - and are - capable of. A harrowing and eloquent true story of suffering and survival, love and despair, it reminds us that there is hope, even in Hell. And it will linger with you long after the final page has been turned.
