The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau

by Timothy W. Ryback

In The Last Survivor, journalist Timothy Ryback explores the surprising--and often disturbing--ways the citizens of Dachau go about their lives in a city the rest of us associate with gas chambers and mass graves. A grandmother recalls the echo of wooden shoes on cobblestone, the clip-clop of inmates marched from boxcars to barracks under the cover of night. A mother-to-be opts to deliver in a neighboring town, so that her child's birth certificate will not be stamped DACHAU. An "SS baby," now middle-aged, wonders about the father he never knew. And should you visit Dachau, you will meet Martin Zaidenstadt, an 87 year-old who accosts tourists with a first-hand account of the camp before its liberation in 1945. Beautifully written, compassionate, wise, The Last Survivor takes us to a place that bears the mark of Cain--and a people unwilling to be defined by the past, yet painfully unable to forget.

Genres: History, Holocaust, Nonfiction, World War II, War, German Literature, Biography

208 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 1999

About the author

Timothy W. Ryback is an American historian and director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague. He previously served as the Deputy-Secretary General of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, and Director and Vice President of the Salzburg Global Seminar. Prior to this, he was a lecturer in the Concentration of History and Literature at Harvard University.

Ryback has written on European history, politics and culture for numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker and The New York Times. He is the author of The Last Survivor: Legacies of Dachau, published in 2000. He also wrote Hitler's Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, published in 2008. Ryback is also author of Rock Around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, published in 1989.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a giant elephant in the town of Dachau and it will not go away.

Until my visit to the town and camp several years ago, I had always assumed that concentration camps were located in remote places. I never expected to find one in the middle of a populated town. It wasn’t until I wandered off to the side of some barracks and looked up to find myself gazing into the kitchen window of the house next door that it really struck me.

And this is the essence of what this book presents. It’s not “another holocaust book”. It’s not about the exterminations or Hitler or the ghettos. It’s about the citizens of Dachau, their proximity to the atrocities and the stigma of the town that has never been washed off.

Journalist Ryback attempts to remain impartial, but, who could?

Most of the current population was born well after the war ended, yet they report having car tires slashed while travelling (the license plates reveal their town). The local bakery, run by the same family for centuries, recalls their most prosperous contract was providing bread for the prisoners. A man born to a local girl and a SS officer remembers growing up down the street and watching horse-drawn wagons piled high with the twisted remains of the camp’s dead as they were hauled past his house.

The book’s namesake is Martin Zaidenstadt, a befuddled 87 year old (at time of printing) who claims to have been a prisoner at Dachau and who spends his days outside the camp’s gas chamber chatting to tourists (and hinting for donations). Ryback spends the book searching for documentation to validate Martin’s stories and we are left with a somewhat ambiguous impression. Martin’s main objective seems to be to inform as many visitors as possible that the signs stating the gas chambers were never used are a big fat lie.

The Last Survivor is beautifully written and truly captures the haunting paradox of this picturesque Bavarian town, it's citizens and it's horrific legacy.

[Mike Clinton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book exceeded my hopes for it as an approach to experiencing the influence of history by individuals and a community. Ryback provides chapters in a vignette style that weave various poignant anecdotes with only minimal direct commentary, letting the impact of people's words filter through the reader; many can be considered separately, although all are related, the recurring focus on and presence of Martin Zaidenstadt, who may or may not have been an inmate of Dachau, providing the thematic core. My favorite chapters included one that featured the memories of a family whose bakery provided bread to the camp (ch.8), a family whose patriarch was known to risk his own life slipping rolls and bread to the inmates who appeared accompanied by SS guards to haul away wagonloads of bread; their reminiscences establish their bona fides as "good Germans", although the conversation with Ryback abruptly switches tone in resentful reaction against the taint of being from Dachau. Another is the story of Emma Wildenrotter (ch.11), an Italian-born tour guide who moved with her husband to Dachau and defiantly gave birth to her daughters in that town's hospital - when many choose the hospital in Munich instead, to avoid having "Dachau" imprinted on their children's birth certificates; hers is an account of gradual realization of what it means to be known to be a Dachauer, with a coda in which she describes the specialized presentation she gives to German soldiers in order to combat the prevalence of rightist and even anti-Semitic tendencies that had become noticeable among young recruits. Ryback even weaves in his own family story to add yet another dimension through this complex and nuanced meditation on interesting questions that address: the distinction and relative value of historical knowledge and memory; the connections among places, people, and the past; the choice - if there is one - of confronting a difficult past or moving beyond it; etc. It's also evocatively written, often beautifully and profoundly moving - as in its closing sentences.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a "for a buck, why not" purchase at a used book sale. No regrets.

Timothy W. Ryback spent 8 years traveling to Dachau, home of one of the first concentration camps in Germany. Rybak's aim was to understand what it was like to live in a town with such a horrible history. Upon his first visit the author met Martin Zaidenstadt, a Dachau survivor. Martin spent his days stationed in front of the crematorium at Dachau. He stood, day after after day, telling his story and rebuking the claims of the administrator's of the Dachau site, who claimed that the gas chamber had never been used.

Ryback does tell the stories of the people who currently resided in Dachau. However, Zaidenstadt became an obsession for him. Over 200,000 names were registered as prisoners at Dachau. In trying to confirm Martin's story, the author could find no trace of him in the records. For 8 years Ryback traveled back to Dachau and other cities in Poland and Germany, searching for Martin's lost history.

This is a small book that packs a big punch. It is not for the squeamish. There are many descriptive entries of the atrocities that took place in the camp.

Recommended for those who love a well re-searched non-fiction.

[Toni Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting perspective of survival. The book isn't really about the last survivor of Dachau (the man who goes to the former concentration camp everyday to share his story), but rather about what it is like for the people of Dachau to live in the shadow of one of their countries darkest times. I had never thought about the concentration camps from the perspective of the ordinary people of Germany (and Europe). I had never considered what it would have been like to live next to one - knowing what was happening inside, but being powerless to do anything about it. Or about what it would be like to have to keep it as a reminder for future generations, when all you really want to do is forget.
One shocking thing I learned was that Hitler had been named as Time Magazine's "man of the year" in 1938. I certainly never learned that in my history class. After looking it up - I found that it wasn't a flattering article about him, but I am still appalled that he would even be considered.

[Mrs. Hassig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because of my part-time job as a librarian at the MCHE Holocaust Library I have access to a ton of books about the Holocaust. As I catalog the different titles, I have begun to keep a list of all of the ones I want to read. However, this one looked interesting enough to read immediately and I was right. it was beautifully written and touches on several topics that I think are worth talking about as the years go by and the survivors pass away. Culpability and the sin of being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a good companion book to Desbois' "The Holocaust by Bullets" and Raul Hilberg's "Perpetrators, Victim,s Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945." There were so many victims of the Holocaust. Not only the millions and millions that died but the millions and millions that survived. It makes me realize once again that there are fates worse than death. Thank you Mr. Ryback for being brave enough to confront people about their pasts. Excellent read!

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

It reads like a long article in The New Yorker, which makes sense given Ryback's background as a journalist. There were affecting moments, and he does capture the oddity of living in Dachau (people routinely drive to Munich for the birth of their children, in order that the word Dachau not appear on the birth certificate). If the book has a drawback, it is Timothy Ryback, who intrudes into the narrative with unbearable observations about what he assumes people think when they meet Martin Zaidenstadt. The Balitmore Sun's review characterized the book as a "tone poem", which is as good a description of it as any.

[Mark Schwaber · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deeply artful and bewildering story amidst the horror and attempted lotus garden of modern Dachau. Having been, so many of Ryback’s accounts brought back vivid moments from my briefest time there. I now want to revisit, if only to continue to honor, and learn.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book follows a man that claims to have been a survivor of the concentration camp at Dachau. The key questions that will be explored are; Who is Martin Zaidenstadt? Why are there no traces of his internment at the camp? Why does he hang around the place he was interred?

Apart from focusing on Zaidenstadt, the book explores the wider issues of living in a place like Dachau, Germany’s reckoning process over World War 2 and the role of religion in Dachau. There are also revealing chapters about the author’s family roots in Austria which explain his interest in this area.

You should read this book if you are interested in the concentration camps of Germany or just happen to have visited Dachau like many thousands do every year.

[Margaret Bramlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting perspective on how the location of Dachau concentration camp has affected the lives of those you live in the little town. I read this the week before I made my 4th visit to Dachau. I was conscious of looking at the town and it's people, this time. I read the book in one day.

[Marsmannix · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow start, but the last chapter is worth the whole book.

[John Geddes]

"Each year many thousands of tourists visit the site of the notorious Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany, not far from Munich. They see the crematory, the memorial shrines, and the museum. And in recent years, as an almost daily fixture, they see Martin Zaidenstadt. This elderly Jewish man lectures visitors to Dachau on his experiences as a wartime prisoner there. He is particularly passionate about the horrors of the camp's gas chamber where, he explains, many prisoners were put to death with poison gas... But now a new 50-minute documentary film, "Martin," and a new book, The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt, written by journalist Timothy W. Ryback and published by Pantheon, have subjected that testimony to critical review. Ryback establishes that the octogenarian Zaidenstadt was born in Jedwabne, Poland, but that his story of Dachau internment is a fraud. He probably never visited the camp until the 1990s, says Ryback, and his tales of gas chamber killings are untrue."

The Journal of Historical Review, March/April 2000 (Vol. 19, No. 2), page 60 https://archive.ph/sWcJ0

[Biblio Brands · Rating 2 out of 5]

Certainly not as graphic as other Holocaust novels I’ve put under my nose. Follows a journalist or author idk - and a Holocaust survivor who goes by Martin. Or is he truly a survivor? That’s the question that ruminates. Overarching assumptions that so called survivors get confused based on media consumption, other survivors stories, etc. that they are unable to disclose their real truth. Which is interesting. But, I don’t for one second believe that gas chambers were present but not used in Dachau. Very easy read.

[Misa195 · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a few interessting spots but all in all, it was a little exhausting to read. Besides, I know things that happend back then were terrible but it seems like the person who is being described here, does whatever it takes to not get over it. He is also acting like it's okay to not earn money for the rest of his life bc germans were so so mean to him. I'm not saying that I know what he was going through but ... AT LEAST HE COULD HAVE TRIED TO MOVE ON A LITTLE.

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a great book, and I am glad to have this addition to my collection. In it, there are recollections from citizens about the prisoners of the camp, the way they were moved from the railway to the camp at night, how people had babies in neighboring towns to avoid having Dachau on the birth certificates. I have often wondered how people in these towns near to where the camps are located are able to ignore what is going on. So many people said they never knew what was happening, and I have always wondered how it would be possible to ignore the smell, the people, the trains, etc. I thought this book was really enlightening.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a personal rule I don't read books about WWII but this one had been on my shelf for over a decade and I finally read it. An unusual take on the story of Dachau. I'll keep this one on my shelf.

[James Emmans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice short read that is full of interest.

[Sharon Zink · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love to read books written by journalists, and this is one. The main character is an 87-year-old man who claims to be a survivor of Dachau concentration camp and who has for the past five years has gone to the camp every day and talked to tourists. Ryback interviews him, and this book is an account of how the author travels to Poland and attempts to verify the survivor's story.