Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz
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Description
József Debreczeni arrived in Auschwitz in 1944. Had he been selected to go left, his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the "lucky" ones, he was sent tot he right, which led to twelve horrifying months of slave labor in a series of camps, ending in the "cold crematorium"—the so-called hospital of the camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work awaited execution. But as Soviet and Allied troops closed in, local Nazi commanders—anxious about the possible consequences of outright murder—decided to leave the remaining prisoners to die in droves rather than send them directly to the gas chambers.
Debreczeni recorded his experiences in Cold Crematorium, described by a commentator as "one of the harshest, most merciless indictments of the Nazism ever written." This haunting memoir, rendered in the precise and unsentimental style of an accomplished journalist, is an eyewitness account of incomparable literary quality. The subject matter is intrinsically tragic, yet the author's evocative prose, sometimes using irony, sarcasm, and acerbic humor, compels the reader to imagine human beings in circumstances impossible to comprehend intellectually.
First published in Hungarian in 1950, it was never translated into a world language due to McCarthyism, Cold War hostilities, and antisemitism. More than seventy years later, this masterpiece that was nearly lost to time will be available in fifteen languages, finally taking its rightful place among the greatest worlds of Holocaust literature.
Info
ISBN: 9781250290533
Published Date: January 23, 2024
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Language: English
Page Count: 244
Size: 8.54" l x 5.68" w x 0.99" h