Cold Crematorium
Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz
Published on 9. January 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-78487-888-7 (ISBN)
Description
This lost classic, a crystal clear eyewitness account of the Holocaust, has been translated into English for the first time, 70 years after it was first published.
'A literary diamond... A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi' The Times
'A masterpiece' New Statesman
**SELECTED AS ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES**
For many years this powerful classic of Holocaust literature was forgotten. Jozsef Debreczeni was a journalist and poet who arrived in Auschwitz in 1944. He survived the initial selection and endured twelve months of incarceration and slave labour in a series of camps. He ended up in the 'Cold Crematorium', the so-called hospital of the forced labour camp Doernhau, where prisoners too weak to work were left to die. Debreczeni beat the odds and survived. This is his story, written in haunting, lyrical prose, compelling us to imagine the unimaginable.
Although published in Hungarian in 1950, the book was then lost for the next seventy years. Now, finally, this important eyewitness account takes its place among the great works of Holocaust literature.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JONATHAN FREEDLAND
'A literary diamond... A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi' The Times
'A masterpiece' New Statesman
**SELECTED AS ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES**
For many years this powerful classic of Holocaust literature was forgotten. Jozsef Debreczeni was a journalist and poet who arrived in Auschwitz in 1944. He survived the initial selection and endured twelve months of incarceration and slave labour in a series of camps. He ended up in the 'Cold Crematorium', the so-called hospital of the forced labour camp Doernhau, where prisoners too weak to work were left to die. Debreczeni beat the odds and survived. This is his story, written in haunting, lyrical prose, compelling us to imagine the unimaginable.
Although published in Hungarian in 1950, the book was then lost for the next seventy years. Now, finally, this important eyewitness account takes its place among the great works of Holocaust literature.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JONATHAN FREEDLAND
Reviews / Votes
A 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 * Astonishing... Debreczeni captures detail after harrowing detail * Guardian * 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 ILLUMINATEDMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
184 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78487-888-7 (9781784878887)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2024
Vintage Digital
€9.49
Available for download
Persons
Jozsef Debreczeni (Author)
Jozsef Debreczeni was a Hungarian-language novelist, poet and journalist who spent most of his life in the former Yugoslavia. He was an editor of the Hungarian daily newspaper UEnnep in Budapest, from which he was dismissed due to anti-Jewish legislation. He was later a contributor to the Hungarian media, including the newspaper Naplo, in the Yugoslav region of Vojvodina, as well as leading Belgrade newspapers. He was awarded the Hid Prize, the highest distinction in Hungarian literature in the former Yugoslavia.
Paul Olchvary (Translator)
Paul Olchvary has translated many books for leading publishers, including Gyoergy Dragoman's The White King, Andras Forgach's No Live Files Remain, Adam Bodor's The Sinistra Zone, Vilmos Kondor's Budapest Noir and Karoly Pap's Azarel. He has received translation awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, and Hungary's Milan Fuest Foundation. His shorter translations have appeared in the Paris Review, New York Times Magazine, Kenyon Review, Tablet, AGNI and Guernica. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Jozsef Debreczeni was a Hungarian-language novelist, poet and journalist who spent most of his life in the former Yugoslavia. He was an editor of the Hungarian daily newspaper UEnnep in Budapest, from which he was dismissed due to anti-Jewish legislation. He was later a contributor to the Hungarian media, including the newspaper Naplo, in the Yugoslav region of Vojvodina, as well as leading Belgrade newspapers. He was awarded the Hid Prize, the highest distinction in Hungarian literature in the former Yugoslavia.
Paul Olchvary (Translator)
Paul Olchvary has translated many books for leading publishers, including Gyoergy Dragoman's The White King, Andras Forgach's No Live Files Remain, Adam Bodor's The Sinistra Zone, Vilmos Kondor's Budapest Noir and Karoly Pap's Azarel. He has received translation awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, and Hungary's Milan Fuest Foundation. His shorter translations have appeared in the Paris Review, New York Times Magazine, Kenyon Review, Tablet, AGNI and Guernica. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.