Cold Crematorium

The gripping memoir Cold Crematorium by József Debreczeni offers a poignant and harrowing testament to the unimaginable horrors experienced during the Holocaust. This lost classic of Holocaust literature, translated for the first time, takes readers on a soul-wrenching journey through the eyes of Debreczeni, a journalist, poet, and survivor. In 1944, József Debreczeni arrived at Auschwitz, where his fate hung in the balance. Had he been directed to the 'left', his life expectancy would have been roughly forty-five minutes. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, he was chosen to go 'right', sparing him immediate death but condemning him to twelve gruelling months of incarceration and slave labour in a series of brutal camps. His journey concluded in the 'Cold Crematorium', the so-called hospital of the forced labour camp Dörnhau, where emaciated prisoners were left to perish. Debreczeni defied the odds and survived the debilitating ordeal. Driven by an unyielding spirit, he committed his experiences to paper in Cold Crematorium. Written with the eloquence and precision of an accomplished journalist, his memoir stands as one of the most severe and potent condemnations of Nazism ever penned. The unsentimental prose challenges readers to engage with the haunting reality of human beings enduring circumstances that defy intellectual comprehension. First published in Hungarian in 1950, Cold Crematorium was overshadowed by the turbulence of McCarthyism, Cold War tensions, and pervasive antisemitism, preventing its translation for decades. At long last, over seventy years after its initial release, this significant eyewitness account is finally available in fifteen languages, ensuring its rightful place among the great works of Holocaust literature. Cold Crematorium is more than a memoir; it is a literary diamond, a masterpiece, and a profound piece of history. The Times has hailed it as "a literary diamond... A Holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi," while the New Statesman declares it "a masterpiece." This rediscovered gem delivers a stark and compelling vision of mankind's darkest hours, achieving a timeless resonance that renders it essential reading for successive generations.