Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt Book

This disturbing group portrait of Dachau's modern-day residents is a Holocaust book unlike any other. American journalist Timothy Ryback, whose Austrian heritage includes a distant relative in the SS and a Nazi-sympathising grandfather, depicts the wide range of perspectives held by those who live in the German town best known for being the site of a concentration camp. He finds that denial, distasteful self-pity, and genuine reflection are some of the typical emotions. Looming over all the other Dachauers, however, is 87-year-old Martin Zaidenstadt, a troubled and possibly delusional man who claims to have been a Dachau inmate and makes it his business to stand outside the camp every day, contradicting the glib accounts of the tour guides. Ryback never finds documentary evidence that Zaidenstadt was in Dachau, and many of the old man's diatribes contain factual errors; yet he is a towering figure, possessed by near-biblical rage and a past whose nightmares include a wife and daughter burned alive in Poland--a trauma that, Ryback subtly suggests, fuels Zaidenstadt's vigil. By presenting his subjects without overt editorial comment, the author forces readers to confront discomfiting issues without the solace of easy condemnation or quick disassociation from decades-old ethical questions that are still painfully relevant. --WendySmithRead More