Survivor Eddie Jaku’s harrowing memoir of life inside Nazi camps recounts unspeakable horrors. But the centenarian insists his debut book also offers hope.

“It is a book for the new generation. I give them hope not to give up, to live,” said Mr Jaku, a great-grandfather and the author of The Happiest Man on Earth.

“I’ve seen miracles. I am a miracle. I was supposed to be dead,” he told the JC, speaking from his home in Australia, where he has been self-isolating for three months.

Each year, he and his wife Flore — they have been married for 74 years — celebrate their anniversary on April 20, Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

Mr Jaku, who survived Buchenwald, Auschwitz and a death march, is determined to remain “the kindest, most helpful and most pleasant person” imaginable and considers happiness the sweetest form of revenge.

“If I can make one miserable person smile, that is a victory,” he said. “People wanted me to die and I didn’t die. People wanted me to hate and I didn’t.”

Born Abraham Jakubowicz to an assimilated family in Leipzig in 1920, he grew up thinking of Germany as the “most civilised, most educated, cultural country” in the world.

“I lost two uncles and grandfather fighting for Germany. So I was German first and German second and Jewish at home.”

Mr Jaku turned 13 the year Hitler took power in 1933 and was soon expelled from secondary school for being Jewish.

He assumed the fake name Walter Schleif and enrolled in an engineering college, where he remained for five years, concealing his Jewish identity to his peers and teachers.

But on Kristallnacht — his parents’ 20th wedding anniversary — Mr Jaku made what he considers the “biggest mistake” of his young adult life and hopped on a nine-hour train ride to Leipzig to pay his family a surprise visit, unaware they had gone into hiding.

Arriving to an empty house, save for his dachshund Lulu, he eventually fell asleep, only to be woken up in the early hours of the morning by Nazi soldiers kicking down the front door.

In the seven years that followed his arrest in November 1938, Mr Jaku was deported to various camps but made several escapes.

In the winter of 1943, Mr Jaku and his family were arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where his parents Isidore and Lina were both gassed.

In Auschwitz, Mr Jaku said, prisoners had to be on constant alert.

“You had to think all the time. You had to organise, and you had to watch what you say, what you do, where you go,” he said.

But his background in engineering helped him survive.

Declared an “economically indispensable Jew”, he was pulled out of gas chambers at the last minute three times and worked for Zyklon B manufacturer IG Farben for a period.

As foreman, he maintained air pipes on various machines producing supplies for the German army and was forced to wear a sign around his neck warning his punishment for any leakage would be death by hanging. “I’m a precision engineer. They needed me. One side wanted me to live because I had to work for them and the other side wanted me to die,” he said.

As allied troops approached, Mr Jaku was sent on a death march from Auschwitz to Buchenwald, where he was transferred to Sonnenburg.

When the camp was evacuated in 1945, he escaped a march and was rescued by American troops.

After the war, Mr Jaku weighted just 28kg and had contracted cholera and typhoid. Despite being given just a 35 per cent chance of survival, he miraculously recovered.

He met his wife while collecting food stamps during the post-war rationing period. The two married in 1946 and had two sons.

They have lived in Australia since relocating in 1950 and have several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

For around 35 years, Mr Jaku felt unable to talk about the Holocaust.

“I wanted to make the most normal, happy family that is possible,” he said.

But he went on to found in 1992 what later became the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants.

He has since shared his testimony with thousands, receiving one of the country’s top honours — an Order of Australia -— in 2013.

Last year, his livestreamed TEDxSydney talk was watched around the world and drew a standing ovation from audience members.

“Don’t hesitate to speak up because as I say, together we are strong. Alone we are not. That’s what you’ll find in the book,” he said.

‘The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor’ by Eddie Jaku is published by Macmillan and priced at £14.99