Description
Book SynopsisA lost classic of Holocaust literature translated for the first time - from journalist, poet and survivor József Debreczeni
'A literary diamond... A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi' THE TIMES
'A masterpiece' NEW STATESMAN
When 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 to the 'right', which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labour in a series of camps, ending in the 'Cold Crematorium' - the so-called hospital of the forced labour camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work were left to die.
Debreczeni beat the odds and survived. Very soon he committed his experiences to paper in Cold Crematorium, one of the harshest and powerful indictments of Nazism ever written. This haunting memoir, rendered in the precise and unsentimental prose of an accomplished journalist, compels the reader to imagine human beings in circumstances impossible to comprehend intellectually.
First published in Hungarian in 1950, it was never translated due to the rise of McCarthyism, Cold War hostilities and antisemitism. This important eyewitness account that was nearly lost to time will be available in fifteen languages, finally taking its rightful place among the great works of Holocaust literature more than seventy years after it was first published.
Trade ReviewA literary diamond – sharp-edged and crystal clear. A haunting chronicle of rare, unsettling power...
A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi * The Times *
Meticulous and intelligent translation... A masterpiece * New Statesman *
In the timeliest possible way, it
succeeds in restoring the Holocaust’s reality... Debreczeni writes with a cinematic clarity, a determination to make detail triumph over mass dehumanisation * Telegraph *
As immediate a confrontation of the horrors of the camps as I’ve ever encountered. It’s also a subtle if startling meditation on what it is to attempt to confront those horrors with words…
Debreczeni has preserved a panoptic depiction of hell, at once personal, communal and atmospheric * New York Times *
A
timely reminder of man's inhumanity to man, especially for the young generation -- Jung Chang, author of WILD SWANS
Whatever I say about this amazing book feels inadequate. Cold Crematorium is a brilliant book, but the word brilliant does not encompass it. It evades words. I have seldom read a book that creates empathy while dealing with the most dehumanized and dehumanizing experience.
I wish everyone would read it, especially in this time of sheer inhumanity and baffling complicity -- Azar Nafisi, author of READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN
An
immensely powerful and deeply humane eyewitness account of the horror of the camps. Through vivid descriptions of what he saw and experienced there, Debreczeni confronts the reader with the hell that the Holocaust was; not as something general belonging to history, but as a particular, concrete and devastating reality -- Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of MY STRUGGLE
Cold Crematorium offers
a cleareyed view of the Nazi death machine with shades of gallows humor, tragedy and anthropological insight * New York Times *
An
indispensable work of literature and a historical document of unsurpassed importance.
It should be required reading -- Jonathan Safran Foer, author of EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED
József Debreczeni was a journalist and a poet and he brings the skills of both to this remarkable work.
Cold Crematorium will awe you with the acuity of its observations and the precision and beauty of its language.
It should be read by everyone wishing to understand the cruelty and barbarism of the Shoah, but also the indomitable spirit of its survivors -- Ehud Barak, Former Prime Minister of Israel
