In 1943, Jewish doctor Eddy de Wind volunteered to work in Westerbork, a transit camp for the deportation of Jews in the east of the Netherlands. From Westerbork, inmates were sent on to concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Eddy had been told that his mother would be exempted from deportation in exchange for his work—in fact, she had already been sent to Auschwitz. At Westerbork, Eddy met a young Jewish nurse named Friedel. They fell in love and married at the camp. Then, in 1943, they were transported to Auschwitz on a freight train.

Unlike so many people arriving at Auschwitz, they were not killed immediately. But they were separated: Eddy ended up in Block 9, as part of the medical staff; Friedel in Block 10, where sterilization and other medical experiments were conducted by doctors, including the notorious Josef Mengele and the gynecologist Carl Clauberg.

Somehow, both Eddy and Friedel survived.

When the Russians approached Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944, the Nazis tried to cover their tracks. They fled, taking with them many prisoners, including Friedel, who were ordered to walk toward Germany. These walks, which later became known as the Death Marches, were intended to eradicate all evidence of the concentration camp’s atrocities.

Eddy hid and remained in the camp; it would take months before the war ended. He joined the Russian liberators. By day, he treated the often very ill survivors the Nazis had left behind and the Russian soldiers. In the evenings, having found a pencil and a notebook, he began to write with furious energy about his experiences at Auschwitz.

In his traumatized state, he created the character of Hans to be the narrator of his own story. Other than in a few instances, the horror of his experience was still so raw he couldn’t find the words to describe it in the first person.

This is Eddy’s story.