The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt [Hardcover]

Timothy W. Ryback (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 1999

Depicting contemporary Dachau, home of the first Nazi concentration camp, the first gas chamber, and the first crematory oven, proves an illusive task.  Timothy Ryback travels to Dachau, looking for the community that inhabits the town today, to find out how the older people live with the memories and how the younger generation deals with the legacy; there he finds Martin Zaidenstadt.  

While Dachau's residents express vastly divergent ways of and reasons for living in a city coinhabited by ghosts, Ryback finds one daily constant: Martin Zaidenstadt's vigil in front of the camp's brick crematorium.  Should you visit the crematorium, Martin will tell you, "My name is Martin Zaidenstadt. I survive this camp. I come here every day for fifty-three years." Martin claims to be a Holocaust survivor; he is both gadfly and guide, a man who embodies the paradox that is Dachau -- a place that was so successful at producing death, that it has become impossible for anyone who resides there to live a normal life.  

Ryback's inquiry into a place uncovers a person whose keen intelligence, subtle wit, and boundless goodwill help us to understand Dachau as a city unable to forget, yet unwilling to be defined by its abominable past. This is a stunning and passionate portrait.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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-sympathizing 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. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

In 1992, Ryback wrote a New Yorker article about the picturesque Bavarian town of Dachau, site of the first Nazi concentration camp, in which he "roundly condemned the residents of Dachau as small-minded and selfish, unwilling to accept moral responsibility for their town's role in the Holocaust." In retrospect, however, he felt that he had too casually adopted the moral high ground. So he went back to talk with Dachau's mayor and its journalists, waitresses and policemen, members of a community living normal lives in a place that reeks of historical atrocity. His portraits reveal the various ways Dachauers confront or evade the ugly history of their hometown (many pregnant women deliver in Munich so their children won't have the stain of Dachau on their birth certificates). Yet the voices of these people are ultimately obscured by the enigmatic man Ryback places at the moral center of the book: Martin Zaidenstadt, who may very well be crazy. Every day, Zaidenstadt goes to the camp to rebut the official history given by tour guides and historians. While Dachauers take a bizarre pride that the historical record shows that the gas chambers were never used at the camp, Zaidenstadt has made it his mission in life to tell visitors, in as many languages as he can, that Jews were, in fact, gassed at Dachau and that he saw it with his own eyes. Though Ryback's archival searches never confirm that Zaidenstadt was ever at Dachau, the author is happy to grant the old man his moral authority. In doing so, he implies that there should, after all, be no exit from history for Dachau. Pensive digressions into his own family history and thoughtful responses to what he sees in Dachau make Ryback an appealing guide. Zaidenstadt is so haunting a figure, however, that his presence overwhelms whatever insight Ryback has to offer into the soul of Dachau's present. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st edition (August 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679439714
• ISBN-13: 978-0679439714
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,125,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I met Martin in 1998 while stationed in Germany, December 25, 1999

By 

Don McCasland - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book thouroughly. When I finished, it left me wondering who Martin really was. I am in the Army, and was recently stationed in Germany. Some friends and I went to Dachau, and the SS shooting range where the Soviet soldiers were executed, and met Martin standing in front of the statue, and he made his speech, just like in the book. While in Germany, I had the opportunity to serve side by side with German soldiers, and met many German civilians, and the past still haunts them. It has been my experience that for the most part, they have come to terms with what happened, and are making sure it doesn't happen again. But it is still difficult for some to deal with the past. I would recommend this book to anyone who wanted to learn more about what happened during and after the war, and how the Germans of today are trying to come to grips with history. If the Japanese government would follow Germany's lead and deal with their role in WWII, and not be in such a deep state of denial, they might be able to put the past behind them once and for all.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best non-fiction book of the year!, November 22, 1999

By 

M. Tosko "history librarian" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt (Hardcover)

I highly recommend this book to any reader out there. Although the intriguing character of Martin Zaidenstadt is the locus of this book, the people of the town of Dachau are really its subject. Zaidenstadt is a fascinating character study, but Ryback's non-judgmental portrait of the town, related through his interviews with various townfolk, is truly fascinating. To see the ambivalence and anger in these people today is a testament to the power of a horrible shared history. I think this would be a great book to teach to young people because it raises difficult questions about responsibility, history, identity, and truth. Read it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars elegant, compelling journalistic work, August 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Survivor: In Search of Martin Zaidenstadt (Hardcover)

Ryback does something I've never had the nerve to do--ask the residents of Dachau about their infamy. He writes beautifully--this is the work of a top drawer journalist--and yet unobtrusively. It reminds me of Krakauer's Into Thin Air. And like Krakauer, Ryback comes from magazine writing. A few years ago when magazines had more room for copy and less space was used on ads this might have appeared unabridged The New York Times Sunday Magazine or The Atlantic Monthly--as cover stories, of course. But now, with small hardback book bindery and clever formatting it suffices as a full-blown book. I read it in 2 hours. Still, it is compelling. As for Martin Zaidenstadt, I never saw him at Dachau any time I visited there (1981 onwards). He appears to indeed be a survivor of WWII and maybe of Dachau--but he also surely is a panhandler preying on the sympathies and guilt of Dachau visitors and (in my humble opinion!) the man is suffering from senile dementia.