In October of 2004, Peruvian journalist Hugo Coya visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp known as the "final station."

While there he wondered if any Peruvians were among the victims.

[Hugo Coya, Author, “Final Station”]:
Well I found to my amazement and to my horror 22 people. Twenty-two people born in Peru who died in the Holocaust but were born here, who had gone to Europe and had fallen into the clutches of Nazism”.

Coya traveled around the world for five years in search of information and firsthand testimony.

[Mercedes Gonzalez, Director of Ediciones Santillana]:
"Not only is the investigation very rigorous, but also very original. Because it was not generally known that Peruvians had died during the Second World War in concentration camps."

“Final Station” reveals moving stories of Peruvians that saved the lives of others, as did Magdalena Truel who died bravely without being Jewish.

[Josefina Townsend, Journalist]:
"I was greatly moved to know that there was a Peruvian, who was raised here, that died in a concentration camp and who is a heroine of the French resistance, and of a resistance which was against totalitarianism, which is the case of the fight against Nazism."

The heroic Assa brothers who sacrificed themselves while opening the barbed wire doors with their bodies in the escape of camp Sobibor. 

Finding Victoria Weissberg, the only Peruvian survivor of 4 concentration camps, is the best gift for Coya.

[Hugo Coya, Author, “Final Station”]:
"She told me very clearly with a smile. Really, I am alive because I wanted to be alive, because I wanted to demonstrate to all the ones that wanted to finish me, that wanted to kill me, who tortured me, who abused me, who killed my family and ended with all of them. Despite everything, I am still alive. And that perhaps is an example of how we can, if we want to and we fight, we can give life a new meaning."

Hugo Coya adds a final thought.

[Hugo Coya, Author “Final Station”]:
"We must know history, we should know it deeply, specially all the dark chapters like these. Many people have told me; why read about such ugly things, we should read about nice things. Precisely for nice things to happen, we must learn from the bad ones so that these things do not repeat themselves."

With this book, Coya seeks to give a lesson of life, with examples of hope, struggle and heroism, but especially to pay tribute to those Peruvians by recovering their stories to free them from oblivion in death.

NTD, Lima, Peru