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

Publisher Review

Meticulous and intelligent translation… A masterpiece * New Statesman * Astonishing… Debreczeni captures detail after harrowing detail * Guardian * 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of gallows humor, tragedy and anthropological insight * New York Times * An indispensable work of literature and a historical document of unsurpassed importance.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 Jozsef 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 Published in Hungarian in 1950 and won him prizes, but has only now been translated, elegantly and precisely, by Paul Olchvary. What is remarkable is that this vivid, painful memoir has remained so long unknown * Literary Review * An extraordinary memoir… An unforgettable testimonial to the terror of the Holocaust and the will to endure * Kirkus, *Starred Review* *