A 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.
