Born in Germany to a large family,Jaku survived after he was interned multiple times,escaped to Belgium,escaped from a train en route to Auschwitz,hid in an attic until he was discovered,and eventually arrived at the concentration camp,where the number 72338 was crudely tattooed onto his left forearm.
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Mr JakutoldThe Sydney Morning Heraldlast year he never expected to live to 100. At times,in his early 20s and interned in Auschwitz,sleeping on hard wooden planks,10 naked men to a row,with nothing but each other for warmth,he didn’t expect to make it through the frozen night.
“If I could survive one more day,an hour,a minute,then the pain would end and tomorrow would come,” he would tell himself.
He would regularly be woken by the suicidal screams of fellow Jews who had “gone to the wire” – killing themselves by running into the electrified barbed-wire fence on the perimeter of the death camp rather than suffer further at the hands of the Nazis. At times,he thought of joining them to perish,like his parents,who had been murdered in the Auschwitz gas chambers. But his friend Kurt Hirschfeld,a fellow young German Jew,convinced him to keep on living.
Then,a Jewish doctor,who helped dislodge a bullet from his leg after one escape attempt,helped the analytical young engineer see life as a mathematical equation:“One hour of rest equals two days of survival.”