November 21, 2025 • 19 mins
For Shop Talk, we bring you Army member Anita Marin's awesome recommendation to learn from Eddie Jaku, the Holocaust survivor who called himself the happiest man on earth!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Everybody's Bill Courtney with Shop Talk. Welcome in the shop,
high out, Hey Bill, what's going on?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Another playoff game this Friday?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, we won again and uh or we're one of
eight teams and our division still playing football in the state.
And this Friday we play a team and oh gosh,
it's five hours east of here, kind of southeast of Nashville,
almost almost in Alabama. We got to go all the
(00:33):
way over there and play them. And they're really, really good.
But our kids are working on a practice, so hopefully
next time we record, I can give you an update
that's positive.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
It's exciting you regardless.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It is exciting. I mean it's it's exciting. I think
we're eleven wins and one loss and you know, playing hard.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Actually I saw that when I looked up the score,
there was some newspaper article title that said, like Manassas
on a are you on like a ten game winning
street or whatever it.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Is manas or yeah, yeah ten or eleven game winning
sor something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Actually drove by Middle of College the other day and
I smiled. You know, here's a sobering reality of all
the very best teams and every state playing football, every
single one of them will lose their last game except one,
you know, And so it's a hell of a quest
(01:24):
to be the one team that doesn't lose the last
game of their seniors years.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, as Turkie Bobby says, if you're not first or last.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
That's it all right. So Shop Talk number seventy nine,
everybody from Army member Anita Marinn. She sent a message
and said, hey, have you read The Happiest Man on Earth?
By Eddie Jacku? And I think it's Jacku. Originally his
name was like Jackiba Ritz and he shortened it to Jacku.
(01:58):
He's a Holocaust survivor. She says, I thought I would
suggest this after listening to today's shop Talk on Victor
Frankle's Man's Searching for meaning. It's amazing, Please don't miss it.
Anita was also an Army member who actually recommended the
Heritage Home story. So Anita, thanks so much for being
involved and engaged and giving us so many great ideas.
(02:21):
And we invite all of you to please give us
ideas for shop Talk and Army normal folks and Anita
and today's shop Talk is proof positive that we will
absolutely listen to what you're saying and bring it up.
So Alex went and found an article about Eddie's life
and his book, The Happiest Man on Earth that we'll
read right after these brief messages from our general sponsors. Everybody,
(03:00):
welcome back shop. That was a long shop bell right there.
That was good, Okay, good shop talking number seventy nine.
Here we go. A guy named Eddie Jacku, who was
a Holocault survivor, wrote a book called The Happiest Man,
and Alex found an article about Eddie's life in his book,
and the article comes from a Jewish publication called I'm
(03:24):
sorry ash Ash.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, I don't know either of it.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I don't know. I should call my buddy Scott Stone.
He would know exactly what that word is, the etymology
of it, how to pronounce it, what it means. But
I'm just gonna call it ash. And it's appropriately titled
The Happiest Man on Earth. Eddie Jacku survived Auschwitz and
became a beloved humanitarian, preaching love and forgiveness in his
(03:50):
adopted country of Australia. Toward the end of his one
hundred and one year lifespan, he delivered a TEDx talk,
The Happiest Man on Earth that has received two million
views on YouTube. So after you finish this, you have
something to go do, go look it up. And he
(04:10):
did all that. After spending seven years as a prisoner
in four different concentration camps, escaping twice, sneaking back in once,
and surviving a forced march that killed fifteen thousand prisoners,
Eddie showed us that hope can never fade away. He
was born Abraham Solomon Jack Kubowitz in leiitsbig Germany, family
(04:37):
of four, on April fourth, nineteen twenty. He had a
happy childhood, growing up with his parents' little sister, Joanna
and Lulu in Lulu the family doction. Gosh, Sorry, his
sister was not named. His sister was Joanna. His dog
was named Lulu. There we go. His playmates called him Abbey,
(04:57):
which became Addie and then Eddie. His engineering school education
would serve him well during his lifetime, but it started
off badly as he and other Jewish boys were kicked
out of school and the Nazis rose to power. Every
time I read more about all of this stuff, every
time I hear somebody's story, I get sickened by the
whole thing. His father orchestrated a new identity for him,
(05:20):
So thirteen year old Eddie became Walter Schleef to hide
his Jewish heritage and continue his study of mechanical engineering
in Tutelagen, which was far south of Lesbig away from home,
he stayed at an orphanage. After classes, he graduated and
earned an internship at a prestigious engineering union. Eddie or Walter,
(05:44):
decided to risk a visit home and took a nine
hour train ride to see his parents and celebrate their
twentieth wedding anniversary. He called it the biggest mistake of
my young life. He didn't know his family had fled
from the rising wave anti Semitic violence. Only their dog
Lulu remained. He went to bed at five am on
November ninth, nineteen thirty eight, the daughter's house was smashed
(06:07):
in by ten Nazi soldiers. They beat him unmercifully, carved
a schwashtika into his arm, and bayoneted Lulu to death.
Eddie was taken outside and saw his neighborhood ablaze. He
was forced to watch his family's two hundred year old
house burn to the ground. Kristen Lot The Night of
(06:28):
Broken Glass Crystal knocked. Thank you say it again, Crystal knocked,
Crystal knock. Yeah, you're too already not to know that, Bill,
I don't know. It's not that it's your tired southern
tongue can't pronounce that kind of stuff. But anyway, it's
spelled k r I s t A l l n
a c ht Crystal knock. The night of broken Glass
(06:52):
had begun, Eddie wrote in his biography that night atrocities
were being committed by civilized Germans over list big all
over the country. Nearly every Jewish home and business in
my city was vandalized, burned, or destroyed, as were our
synagogues and our people. When the mob was done destroying property,
(07:13):
they rounded up Jewish people, many of them young children,
and threw them in the river that I used to
skate on as a child. The ice was thin in
the water, freezing. Men and women I'd grown up with
stood on the river banks, spitting and jeering. As people
struggled Shoot them, they cried, shoot the Jewish dogs. He
was loaded onto a truck and taken to Bushwald and
(07:36):
eventually put on a trained Ashwitz. Is it Buchenwald, Yes, Bukenwald,
And eventually put on a trained Ashwitz. Over the next
seven dark years, he would serve time in four different
concentration camps. Can you imagine growing up in a community
and having gone to school and everything else with a
bunch of people you think you're civilized friends, and then
(07:59):
they're burning you and bayonetting your dog and throwing you
in an icy river. I mean, it's just.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
It is scary to think a lot of us are
capable of that.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
It is it's scary to think what racism and deep
political division can drive, what evil it can drive humans
to Okay, he was loaded on a truck and taken
to Buchwald and eventually put on a train to Ashwitz.
Over the next seven dark years, he served time in
(08:31):
four concentration camps. In Ashwitz, the number one seven to two, three,
three eight was tattooed on his arm. He learned that
his parents had been victims of the Oschwitz gas chambers
and crematoriums, and he slept naked and a narrow row
of ten men. When it was eight degrees below zero fahrenheit.
He marched for an hour and a half to work,
(08:53):
sometimes clearing debris from a bombed out ammunition depot or
jackhammering coal on a twelve hour show. When his captors
learned of his mechanical engineering background, he was made a
foreman at the ig Farborne Chemical Factory and was responsible
for regulating air pressure to two inner machines. One of
(09:14):
the company's chief products was a poison gas used in
the Nazi gas chambers. One of the machine operators who
ran into was his sister. They realized they couldn't speak
or acknowledged each other in front of their captors. They
passed each other in silence every day. He escaped once
by hiding in a food drum and rolling off a
(09:34):
delivery truck, still dressed in his prison pajamas, who was
freezing cold, and stopped at a cabin for help. He
was met by a Polish farmer and his rifle. The
first five bullets missed him, but the six hit his
left calf. He had to sneak back into Ashwood's, where
an old French doctor used an ivory letter opener and
his fingers to dig and squeeze out the bullet. They
(09:58):
timed the surgery to coincide with the bell was ringing
at a nearby Catholic church to muffle his screams of pain,
and what did he think of the man who shot him?
Do I hate that man? No, I do not hate anyone.
He was just weak and probably as scared as I was.
He let his fear overtake his morals. And I know
(10:18):
that for every cruel person in the world, there's a
kind one. By early nineteen forty five, the Russian troops
were advancing and the Nazi war effort was weakening. Auschwitz
was evacuated and the Germans destroyed their gas chambers and
crematoriums and forced the Auschwitz prisoners on a march into
deeper German occupied territory. Sixty thousand prisoners started this death march,
(10:41):
and fifteen thousand parish During the march. The surviving prisoners
boarded a train to Buchenwald and Eddie was assigned to
a machine shop to make gears. By now, the Allied
effort was making solid advances against the Nazis, and Russian
artillery and British bombing runs were heard daily. The prisoners
were marched away from the advancing Russians to the east,
(11:04):
only to get closer to the advancing American army to
the west. Nazi soldiers began deserting their post. He escaped
by crawling into a drainage ditch, then hid in caves,
eating snails and slugs. Near death, he was crawling down
a highway and was met by an American tank. He
weighed sixty two pounds. He wrote in his biography, those
(11:28):
beautiful American soldiers. I'll never forget. They put me in
a blanket, and I woke up one week later in
a German hospital. At first I thought I was cuckoo crazy,
because yesterday I had been in a cave, and now
I was in a bed with white sheets and cushions
and nurses all around. Six weeks later, he was discharged
and walked over the border into Belgium. He vowed never
(11:49):
to return to Germany again. And Belgium he spent time
at a Jewish welfare society, where Jewish refugees and soldiers
of the Allied armies would meet for meals and fellowship.
He found work as a precision engineer and soon was
a factory foreman, supervising twenty machinists. A local newspaper ran
a story of photos of Holocaust survivors, and his sister
(12:10):
Joanna saw it. They were reunited and lived together in
Brussels until she moved to Australia. On April twenty, nineteen
forty six, he married Flow Mullow, a Greek Separtic Jew
raised in Belgium. It would be a seventy five year marriage.
They met at the town hall of Brussels while she
administered food stamps to them. A year later, their son,
(12:33):
Michael was born. Want a miracle to be alive and
to hold my beautiful baby, my beautiful wife. If you
had told me when I was being tortured and starved
by the concentration camps that soon I would be so lucky,
I would have never believed you. The greatest thing you
ever do is beloved by another person. Each year, Flora
and I celebrate our wedding anniversary on twenty April Hitler's birthday.
(12:57):
We are still here there. In my mind, this is
really the best revenge and is the only range I'm
interested in to be the happiest man on earth. In
nineteen fifty, the young family moved to Australia to join
his sister, and he took a job at a medical
instrument factory in Sydney. Soon he was in the automative
(13:18):
repair business and opened his own service station. Next, he
and Flora opened a real estate office, reclaimed his original
name and called the business E Jacku real Estate. Eddie
and Flora worked there until their nineties. Slowly, Eddie began
to speak about his years of brutal imprisonment. In nineteen
seventy two, he joined a group of twenty Holocaust survivors
(13:41):
Great Meeting Place. Ten years later, the Australian Association of
Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants was founded. Eddie was instrumental
in the founding of Sydney's Jewish Museum in nineteen ninety two.
He volunteered there for the past three decades, taking school
groups on tours of the museum's Holocausts exhibitions, bringing the grainy, faded,
(14:03):
black and white images to life for thousands of young
students and urging them to never forget. Eddie would recall
his own experiences and then point to a leather belt,
his only personal item that survived the camps. I May
twenty nineteen, he delivered a TEDx talk in front of
five thousand people. His talk, The Happiest Man on Earth,
(14:26):
has been viewed by two million people. Here are some
of the key takeaways from his talk. I do not
hate anyone. Hate is a disease which may destroy our enemy,
but also destroyed you and the process. I made the
promise when my son was born that from the day
until the end of my life, I promise to be
(14:47):
a happy, smile, be polite, helpful and kind. Today I
teach and share happiness with everyone I meet. Happiness does
not fall from the sky your hands. If you're healthy
and happy, you're a millionaire. Happiness also brings good health
to the body and mind, and I attribute my ninety
(15:09):
nine years of health mostly to the positive and happy attitude.
One flowers my garden. One good friend is my world.
Young people today forget to stop. They're constantly running and
don't know where they're running to. You should take time
to be happy and enjoy life. There's a time to
laugh and there's a time to cry. I see good
(15:29):
things in life. Invite a friend or family member for
mil go for a walk. Tomorrow will come, but first
enjoy today. His twenty twenty biographical memoir The Happiest Man
on Earth, was an international bestseller. Edijaqu died in Sydney
on twelve October twenty twenty one, at the age of
one hundred and one his life floor died in Sydney
(15:52):
on six July twenty twenty two at the age of
ninety eight. That is the story of Edijaku. Wow, just stop,
don't get overtaken by all of what's going on in
your life, and enjoy a sunset, enjoy a walk, and
(16:12):
revel in the love of another human being, and enjoy
a meal with a friend, and understand that alone can
make you the happiest person on earth. What a story.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Thank you, Anita. A hell of a story.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
A hell of a story. I don't know if I
have much to add except read the book, watch the
dead talk and be inspired to choose to be happy.
Because I think when we're surrounded by all the casts
that we feel like we're surrounded with in our lives,
we just kind of recoil into this unhappy disposition of
(16:51):
the rat race. And the truth is if a guy
who is put through all of this can choose to
find happiness and a friend and the love of another
person and a walk in the sunset, the truth is,
even in the depths of all the chaos in our lives,
(17:13):
we can make the choice, the simple choice to say
I'm gonna wake up today and be happy and attack
the day. And this guy Eddie, I think illustrates that beautifully.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yeah, the only thing I think that stress is I
really love his line. The greatest thing you will ever
do is be loved by another person.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
The greatest thing you will ever do is be loved
by another person. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Obviously, you have to love well to be loved by
another person, so there's sure there's some action on your part.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
But it's good stuff, it really is. And you know,
if you're going to serve and you'll be part of
army and normal folks, you kind of need to love
humanity a little bit and care. But I mean, I'm
living proof that that love of humanity and care for
(18:06):
people who maybe not be as blessed as you, the
love you get back from it is infinitely greater, and
that does create a lot of happiness. And Teddy's point,
there's nothing like the love of another person which you
can get from service in all kinds of ways. So
(18:26):
pretty crazy stuff. Okay, that's shop talking number seventy nine.
I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it helps you think.
I hope it helps you choose to make today a
great day. If you have ideas from shop Talk, please
send them to us. You can reach me anytime a
build it normal folks dot us. If you like this episode,
(18:47):
please rate, review it, share it friends, share it on social,
join the army at normal folks dot us. Do any
and all of these things that can help us grow
our show and thusly our reach and thusly are act.
That is shop Talk number seventy nine. Thanks for being
with us. I'll see you next week.
Everybody's Bill Courtney with Shop Talk. Welcome in the shop,
high out, Hey Bill, what's going on?
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Another playoff game this Friday?
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Yeah, we won again and uh or we're one of
eight teams and our division still playing football in the state.
And this Friday we play a team and oh gosh,
it's five hours east of here, kind of southeast of Nashville,
almost almost in Alabama. We got to go all the
(00:33):
way over there and play them. And they're really, really good.
But our kids are working on a practice, so hopefully
next time we record, I can give you an update
that's positive.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
It's exciting you regardless.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
It is exciting. I mean it's it's exciting. I think
we're eleven wins and one loss and you know, playing hard.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Actually I saw that when I looked up the score,
there was some newspaper article title that said, like Manassas
on a are you on like a ten game winning
street or whatever it.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Is manas or yeah, yeah ten or eleven game winning
sor something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Actually drove by Middle of College the other day and
I smiled. You know, here's a sobering reality of all
the very best teams and every state playing football, every
single one of them will lose their last game except one,
you know, And so it's a hell of a quest
(01:24):
to be the one team that doesn't lose the last
game of their seniors years.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yeah, as Turkie Bobby says, if you're not first or last.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
That's it all right. So Shop Talk number seventy nine,
everybody from Army member Anita Marinn. She sent a message
and said, hey, have you read The Happiest Man on Earth?
By Eddie Jacku? And I think it's Jacku. Originally his
name was like Jackiba Ritz and he shortened it to Jacku.
(01:58):
He's a Holocaust survivor. She says, I thought I would
suggest this after listening to today's shop Talk on Victor
Frankle's Man's Searching for meaning. It's amazing, Please don't miss it.
Anita was also an Army member who actually recommended the
Heritage Home story. So Anita, thanks so much for being
involved and engaged and giving us so many great ideas.
(02:21):
And we invite all of you to please give us
ideas for shop Talk and Army normal folks and Anita
and today's shop Talk is proof positive that we will
absolutely listen to what you're saying and bring it up.
So Alex went and found an article about Eddie's life
and his book, The Happiest Man on Earth that we'll
read right after these brief messages from our general sponsors. Everybody,
(03:00):
welcome back shop. That was a long shop bell right there.
That was good, Okay, good shop talking number seventy nine.
Here we go. A guy named Eddie Jacku, who was
a Holocault survivor, wrote a book called The Happiest Man,
and Alex found an article about Eddie's life in his book,
and the article comes from a Jewish publication called I'm
(03:24):
sorry ash Ash.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, I don't know either of it.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I don't know. I should call my buddy Scott Stone.
He would know exactly what that word is, the etymology
of it, how to pronounce it, what it means. But
I'm just gonna call it ash. And it's appropriately titled
The Happiest Man on Earth. Eddie Jacku survived Auschwitz and
became a beloved humanitarian, preaching love and forgiveness in his
(03:50):
adopted country of Australia. Toward the end of his one
hundred and one year lifespan, he delivered a TEDx talk,
The Happiest Man on Earth that has received two million
views on YouTube. So after you finish this, you have
something to go do, go look it up. And he
(04:10):
did all that. After spending seven years as a prisoner
in four different concentration camps, escaping twice, sneaking back in once,
and surviving a forced march that killed fifteen thousand prisoners,
Eddie showed us that hope can never fade away. He
was born Abraham Solomon Jack Kubowitz in leiitsbig Germany, family
(04:37):
of four, on April fourth, nineteen twenty. He had a
happy childhood, growing up with his parents' little sister, Joanna
and Lulu in Lulu the family doction. Gosh, Sorry, his
sister was not named. His sister was Joanna. His dog
was named Lulu. There we go. His playmates called him Abbey,
(04:57):
which became Addie and then Eddie. His engineering school education
would serve him well during his lifetime, but it started
off badly as he and other Jewish boys were kicked
out of school and the Nazis rose to power. Every
time I read more about all of this stuff, every
time I hear somebody's story, I get sickened by the
whole thing. His father orchestrated a new identity for him,
(05:20):
So thirteen year old Eddie became Walter Schleef to hide
his Jewish heritage and continue his study of mechanical engineering
in Tutelagen, which was far south of Lesbig away from home,
he stayed at an orphanage. After classes, he graduated and
earned an internship at a prestigious engineering union. Eddie or Walter,
(05:44):
decided to risk a visit home and took a nine
hour train ride to see his parents and celebrate their
twentieth wedding anniversary. He called it the biggest mistake of
my young life. He didn't know his family had fled
from the rising wave anti Semitic violence. Only their dog
Lulu remained. He went to bed at five am on
November ninth, nineteen thirty eight, the daughter's house was smashed
(06:07):
in by ten Nazi soldiers. They beat him unmercifully, carved
a schwashtika into his arm, and bayoneted Lulu to death.
Eddie was taken outside and saw his neighborhood ablaze. He
was forced to watch his family's two hundred year old
house burn to the ground. Kristen Lot The Night of
(06:28):
Broken Glass Crystal knocked. Thank you say it again, Crystal knocked,
Crystal knock. Yeah, you're too already not to know that, Bill,
I don't know. It's not that it's your tired southern
tongue can't pronounce that kind of stuff. But anyway, it's
spelled k r I s t A l l n
a c ht Crystal knock. The night of broken Glass
(06:52):
had begun, Eddie wrote in his biography that night atrocities
were being committed by civilized Germans over list big all
over the country. Nearly every Jewish home and business in
my city was vandalized, burned, or destroyed, as were our
synagogues and our people. When the mob was done destroying property,
(07:13):
they rounded up Jewish people, many of them young children,
and threw them in the river that I used to
skate on as a child. The ice was thin in
the water, freezing. Men and women I'd grown up with
stood on the river banks, spitting and jeering. As people
struggled Shoot them, they cried, shoot the Jewish dogs. He
was loaded onto a truck and taken to Bushwald and
(07:36):
eventually put on a trained Ashwitz. Is it Buchenwald, Yes, Bukenwald,
And eventually put on a trained Ashwitz. Over the next
seven dark years, he would serve time in four different
concentration camps. Can you imagine growing up in a community
and having gone to school and everything else with a
bunch of people you think you're civilized friends, and then
(07:59):
they're burning you and bayonetting your dog and throwing you
in an icy river. I mean, it's just.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
It is scary to think a lot of us are
capable of that.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
It is it's scary to think what racism and deep
political division can drive, what evil it can drive humans
to Okay, he was loaded on a truck and taken
to Buchwald and eventually put on a train to Ashwitz.
Over the next seven dark years, he served time in
(08:31):
four concentration camps. In Ashwitz, the number one seven to two, three,
three eight was tattooed on his arm. He learned that
his parents had been victims of the Oschwitz gas chambers
and crematoriums, and he slept naked and a narrow row
of ten men. When it was eight degrees below zero fahrenheit.
He marched for an hour and a half to work,
(08:53):
sometimes clearing debris from a bombed out ammunition depot or
jackhammering coal on a twelve hour show. When his captors
learned of his mechanical engineering background, he was made a
foreman at the ig Farborne Chemical Factory and was responsible
for regulating air pressure to two inner machines. One of
(09:14):
the company's chief products was a poison gas used in
the Nazi gas chambers. One of the machine operators who
ran into was his sister. They realized they couldn't speak
or acknowledged each other in front of their captors. They
passed each other in silence every day. He escaped once
by hiding in a food drum and rolling off a
(09:34):
delivery truck, still dressed in his prison pajamas, who was
freezing cold, and stopped at a cabin for help. He
was met by a Polish farmer and his rifle. The
first five bullets missed him, but the six hit his
left calf. He had to sneak back into Ashwood's, where
an old French doctor used an ivory letter opener and
his fingers to dig and squeeze out the bullet. They
(09:58):
timed the surgery to coincide with the bell was ringing
at a nearby Catholic church to muffle his screams of pain,
and what did he think of the man who shot him?
Do I hate that man? No, I do not hate anyone.
He was just weak and probably as scared as I was.
He let his fear overtake his morals. And I know
(10:18):
that for every cruel person in the world, there's a
kind one. By early nineteen forty five, the Russian troops
were advancing and the Nazi war effort was weakening. Auschwitz
was evacuated and the Germans destroyed their gas chambers and
crematoriums and forced the Auschwitz prisoners on a march into
deeper German occupied territory. Sixty thousand prisoners started this death march,
(10:41):
and fifteen thousand parish During the march. The surviving prisoners
boarded a train to Buchenwald and Eddie was assigned to
a machine shop to make gears. By now, the Allied
effort was making solid advances against the Nazis, and Russian
artillery and British bombing runs were heard daily. The prisoners
were marched away from the advancing Russians to the east,
(11:04):
only to get closer to the advancing American army to
the west. Nazi soldiers began deserting their post. He escaped
by crawling into a drainage ditch, then hid in caves,
eating snails and slugs. Near death, he was crawling down
a highway and was met by an American tank. He
weighed sixty two pounds. He wrote in his biography, those
(11:28):
beautiful American soldiers. I'll never forget. They put me in
a blanket, and I woke up one week later in
a German hospital. At first I thought I was cuckoo crazy,
because yesterday I had been in a cave, and now
I was in a bed with white sheets and cushions
and nurses all around. Six weeks later, he was discharged
and walked over the border into Belgium. He vowed never
(11:49):
to return to Germany again. And Belgium he spent time
at a Jewish welfare society, where Jewish refugees and soldiers
of the Allied armies would meet for meals and fellowship.
He found work as a precision engineer and soon was
a factory foreman, supervising twenty machinists. A local newspaper ran
a story of photos of Holocaust survivors, and his sister
(12:10):
Joanna saw it. They were reunited and lived together in
Brussels until she moved to Australia. On April twenty, nineteen
forty six, he married Flow Mullow, a Greek Separtic Jew
raised in Belgium. It would be a seventy five year marriage.
They met at the town hall of Brussels while she
administered food stamps to them. A year later, their son,
(12:33):
Michael was born. Want a miracle to be alive and
to hold my beautiful baby, my beautiful wife. If you
had told me when I was being tortured and starved
by the concentration camps that soon I would be so lucky,
I would have never believed you. The greatest thing you
ever do is beloved by another person. Each year, Flora
and I celebrate our wedding anniversary on twenty April Hitler's birthday.
(12:57):
We are still here there. In my mind, this is
really the best revenge and is the only range I'm
interested in to be the happiest man on earth. In
nineteen fifty, the young family moved to Australia to join
his sister, and he took a job at a medical
instrument factory in Sydney. Soon he was in the automative
(13:18):
repair business and opened his own service station. Next, he
and Flora opened a real estate office, reclaimed his original
name and called the business E Jacku real Estate. Eddie
and Flora worked there until their nineties. Slowly, Eddie began
to speak about his years of brutal imprisonment. In nineteen
seventy two, he joined a group of twenty Holocaust survivors
(13:41):
Great Meeting Place. Ten years later, the Australian Association of
Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants was founded. Eddie was instrumental
in the founding of Sydney's Jewish Museum in nineteen ninety two.
He volunteered there for the past three decades, taking school
groups on tours of the museum's Holocausts exhibitions, bringing the grainy, faded,
(14:03):
black and white images to life for thousands of young
students and urging them to never forget. Eddie would recall
his own experiences and then point to a leather belt,
his only personal item that survived the camps. I May
twenty nineteen, he delivered a TEDx talk in front of
five thousand people. His talk, The Happiest Man on Earth,
(14:26):
has been viewed by two million people. Here are some
of the key takeaways from his talk. I do not
hate anyone. Hate is a disease which may destroy our enemy,
but also destroyed you and the process. I made the
promise when my son was born that from the day
until the end of my life, I promise to be
(14:47):
a happy, smile, be polite, helpful and kind. Today I
teach and share happiness with everyone I meet. Happiness does
not fall from the sky your hands. If you're healthy
and happy, you're a millionaire. Happiness also brings good health
to the body and mind, and I attribute my ninety
(15:09):
nine years of health mostly to the positive and happy attitude.
One flowers my garden. One good friend is my world.
Young people today forget to stop. They're constantly running and
don't know where they're running to. You should take time
to be happy and enjoy life. There's a time to
laugh and there's a time to cry. I see good
(15:29):
things in life. Invite a friend or family member for
mil go for a walk. Tomorrow will come, but first
enjoy today. His twenty twenty biographical memoir The Happiest Man
on Earth, was an international bestseller. Edijaqu died in Sydney
on twelve October twenty twenty one, at the age of
one hundred and one his life floor died in Sydney
(15:52):
on six July twenty twenty two at the age of
ninety eight. That is the story of Edijaku. Wow, just stop,
don't get overtaken by all of what's going on in
your life, and enjoy a sunset, enjoy a walk, and
(16:12):
revel in the love of another human being, and enjoy
a meal with a friend, and understand that alone can
make you the happiest person on earth. What a story.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Thank you, Anita. A hell of a story.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
A hell of a story. I don't know if I
have much to add except read the book, watch the
dead talk and be inspired to choose to be happy.
Because I think when we're surrounded by all the casts
that we feel like we're surrounded with in our lives,
we just kind of recoil into this unhappy disposition of
(16:51):
the rat race. And the truth is if a guy
who is put through all of this can choose to
find happiness and a friend and the love of another
person and a walk in the sunset, the truth is,
even in the depths of all the chaos in our lives,
(17:13):
we can make the choice, the simple choice to say
I'm gonna wake up today and be happy and attack
the day. And this guy Eddie, I think illustrates that beautifully.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Yeah, the only thing I think that stress is I
really love his line. The greatest thing you will ever
do is be loved by another person.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
The greatest thing you will ever do is be loved
by another person. It's fantastic.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
Obviously, you have to love well to be loved by
another person, so there's sure there's some action on your part.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
But it's good stuff, it really is. And you know,
if you're going to serve and you'll be part of
army and normal folks, you kind of need to love
humanity a little bit and care. But I mean, I'm
living proof that that love of humanity and care for
(18:06):
people who maybe not be as blessed as you, the
love you get back from it is infinitely greater, and
that does create a lot of happiness. And Teddy's point,
there's nothing like the love of another person which you
can get from service in all kinds of ways. So
(18:26):
pretty crazy stuff. Okay, that's shop talking number seventy nine.
I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it helps you think.
I hope it helps you choose to make today a
great day. If you have ideas from shop Talk, please
send them to us. You can reach me anytime a
build it normal folks dot us. If you like this episode,
(18:47):
please rate, review it, share it friends, share it on social,
join the army at normal folks dot us. Do any
and all of these things that can help us grow
our show and thusly our reach and thusly are act.
That is shop Talk number seventy nine. Thanks for being
with us. I'll see you next week.
Host
Bill Courtney
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