The Happiest Man on Earth

The Happiest Man on Earth

At five in the morning on November 10, 1938, ten men with sledgehammers broke down the front door of a house in Leipzig, Germany. Abraham Jaku was alone inside. His parents were away celebrating their wedding anniversary. He was eighteen years old, still asleep, and he heard Lulu -- his German shepherd -- barking downstairs before the first blow landed. The dog rushed the men at the door. One of them pulled out a pistol and shot her. When Abraham came downstairs, the men beat him until he could not stand. They broke furniture, smashed glass, destroyed paintings that had hung on the walls for two hundred years. Then they dragged him out into the street.

That was Kristallnacht. The Night of Broken Glass. Across Germany and Austria, organized squads of SS men and Hitler Youth were doing the same thing to Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses. Ninety-one Jews were killed that night in documented attacks. Thirty thousand were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Abraham was taken to Buchenwald.

This is how Eddie Jaku's story begins. Not with heroism. Not with a neat arc of triumph over evil. It begins with a dog being shot and a boy getting beaten in his own home while his parents were out.

Jaku -- born Abraham Salomon Jakubowicz on April 14, 1920 -- would go on to survive Buchenwald, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and two death marches. His mother Lina and his father Isidore were murdered in a gas chamber on the day they arrived at Auschwitz. His tattoo number was 172338. He was liberated in 1945, emigrated to Australia in 1950, and died in Sydney on October 12, 2021, at the age of 101.