REVIEW #8: MEET THE HAPPIEST MAN ON EARTH!

The Happiest Man on Earth
By Eddie Jaku
Pan Macmillan Australia, 2020

Wow! Where to start with this book. The Australian Book Industry Awards Winner 2021. The story of a 100-year-old Holocaust survivor. It only takes a few hours to read, but it’s impact is immense. History books do not capture the horrors of a hate-filled society wreaking havoc on a nation already hurting in the wake of World War. I. Eddie wrote:

Germany was in trouble. We had lost the last war and the economy
was ruined. The victorious Allied powers demanded more money
in reparations than Germany could ever pay back, and 68 million
people were suffering.

This is not news. This is well documented. What makes it real, and heart-wrenching, is Eddie’s anecdote about his 13th birthday. All he wanted was six eggs, a loaf of white bread and a pineapple. Met any thirteen-year-olds lately who have these on their most-wanted birthday list? He described how his mother ‘would walk many kilometres to market to exchange handbags and clothes she’d collected in better times for eggs, milk, butter or bread.’ Even after our Covid-19 hysteria, it is hard to imagine the scarcity of such basic items and the sacrifice needed to acquire them for their families.

However, this passage about the early deprivations that allowed Hitler to rise to power by offering to make Germany great again is the least disturbing in the life of Eddie Jaku. For five long years ‘of unrelenting work and loneliness’ he lived far from his family under the assumed name of a German orphan (without the stigma of being Jewish), in order to undertake an apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer. Not only did he complete this task, despite the pressure of leading a lonely double life, he was ‘selected as the top apprentice of the year.’ Even more importantly, as his father anticipated, this knowledge and skill became, literally, a lifesaver for Eddie on more than one occasion.

Through all his struggles to survive as a despised Jew in Europe, and the physical and emotional traumas of his time in both Buchenwald and Auschwitz, Eddie managed to reflect on how such hatred could take hold of ordinary people. Moreover, he also noticed that some people remained kind and that, through it all, he could appreciate – perhaps more than ever – the importance of family, of education, of having a skill and, above all, following his father’s teaching that ‘there is more pleasure in giving than in taking, that the important things in life – friends, family, kindness – are far more precious than money.’ Eddie came to understand these things and many more which he shares with the reader in this marvellous book. Because of the similarity of their titles, I inevitably thought of Anh Do (The Happiest Refugee), as I read Eddie’s book. One can’t help noticing that trials of all kinds build character, encourage a deep devotion to family and an other-centred joy in life that overcomes the horror of the worst that human beings can inflict upon each other. All the facts, laws and statistics about the Holocaust, no matter how outrageous they are, will not affect you as greatly as spending a few hours with Eddie Jaku, OAM.