challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Terminei este livro mais depressa do que aquilo que estava à espera. Neste livro, temos mais a noção do que foi o que se passou nos campos de concentração.
Foi muito interessante de ler algo escrito ainda com todas as emoções do que estava a acontecer. Confesso que estava à espera de ler um relato na primeira pessoa sobre o que acontece, mas apenas se teve pequenos deslumbres disso, sendo maioritariamente na terceira pessoa e, com isso, senti um ligeiro afastamento dos acontecimentos do livro. Mas aconselho a sua leitura, é muito interessante.

The heartbreaking story and one of the only Auschwitz accounts written in the camp itself had me invested the entire time at another perspective of the horrors of humanity. Unfortunately, I felt a little more disconnected from this book for reasons I can't explain even for myself, but it was a very emotional read which held strong emotions to losing sight of a loved one and having the afterwords from Eddy's family gave me insight to his life which pulled a lot on my heart especially with how Friedel and Eddy's story ended. It's such a shame that Eddy himself never got to see this book published or to see how his words have impacted people and allow further education of Auschwitz.

rachaelreads92's review

5.0
challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

I have read a lot of Holocaust memoirs, and this is a little bit different to others that I have read. I think the main reason that it is different is that it was written during the time the author was in the camp. Therefore, it doesn't have any hindsight, it doesn't have any additional information that he wouldn't of had at the time, it has all of his thoughts that were happening right then and there. Most, if not all, of the memoirs that I have read about the Holocaust were written several to many years after the end of World War II. 

Something that is a really unique about this book it is actually even though it's a memoir it's written in the third person. The author found that he simply could not write about these painful memories in the first person he had to use a character that he invented so he could record everything that happened . Everythinng that happened to this character, happened to Eddie but in order for him to get these thoughts down on paper he had to use this third person narrative.

This book follows Eddy’s journey from Westerbork (a Dutch transit camp), to Auschwitz I, to the liberation of the Auschwitz by the Red Army, to his volunteering in the Red Army as a doctor. 

Eddy de Wind was a newly qualified doctor (in fact he was one of of the last Jewish doctors qualified during the war in the Netherlands) when in 1943 he volunteered to go to Westerbork, which was a Dutch transit camp, in hopes to save his mother. However, when he arrived at the camp he had discovered that his mother had already been sent to Auschwitz for labour. Even though he had been promised that he would be spared from transports by the Jewish Council , he was eventually sent to Auschwitz with his wife, Friedel. Friedel and Eddy were fortunate enough to spend most of their time in Auschwitz in close proximity in Auschwitz. This really is a love story about how Eddie survived for Friedel. He talks about how he would've given up on life if she wasn't there for him to survive for.

Really lovely book and I highly recommend it!
informative sad fast-paced

A sad but decent read
emotional medium-paced
dark emotional informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced

I don’t really know what to say about this book… it was was well written and absolutley horrific. I think everyone should have to read this book but at the same time I don’t want anyone to have to experience the sadness and anger it will provoke.
It is believed to be the only complete book written inside Auschwitz and it definitely gave me more deatil, knowledge and understanding of the atrocities that happened there. Although it is a personal account, the author wrote it in the third person and gave the main character the name Hans, as a way of distancing himself from the horrors he experienced.
There really aren’t words to do justice to this book. What humans are capable of is so deeply disturbing and it would be easier to just not read books like this one, to pretend that these nightmares can’t be true, but I think we must. No matter how upsetting it is, we have to read the stories by those who survived, to honour them and to believe them.