I gave this long lost memoir of life in the Auschwitz camps 5 stars but, if I could, I'd give it 10 stars!!

This memoir by the Hungarian journalist and poet who arrived in Auschwitz in 1944 and was put to work as a slave laborer is brutal, painful to read, and yet important to read. Incredible detail about daily life in several of the camps, including, for his final months in camp, living in a hospital camp where prisoners too weak to work awaited death on extremely limited rations.

It's a haunting eyewitness account with details about the harsh treatment by fellow Jews in positions of authority and about food, bartering, diseases, and the deaths he saw.

Though painful to read, this book is riveting. I've read quite a few books about life in the camps and I can't recall any better than this. It should be a classic.

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via Net Galley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.) ( )

When stepping off the train in Auschwitz, Jozsef was sent right, into the line of men who would be worked to death. Sent to a series of camps, he performed hard labor until his body nearly gave out. Towards the end of the war he was sent to the Cold Crematorium, the “hospital” unit for camp Dornhau. In the cold crematorium, people waited to die. Weak and given the smallest food rations, survival was nearly impossible.

This was a well done translation. The book itself was brutal and hard to read. The author described his condition in a detached, matter-of-fact way, leaving little to the imagination. His struggle and survival was nothing short of a miracle. Overall, highly recommended. ( )

Cold Crematorium is moving, thought-provoking and heart-breaking. It’s chilling. Especially since author József Debreczeni describes his experiences – his horrifying, terrifying, tragic, unbelievable, hard-to-read, impossible to fully image experiences – in such a direct, matter-of-fact way. His writing is excellent, his journalistic background shines through. The subject matter is never easy to read, but Debreczeni’s prose is. It’s ironic, sarcastic, and even humorous at times. It flows like good fiction. But it’s not fiction, it’s real. Debreczeni captures the initial bewilderment at finding himself a prisoner, snatched from his ordinary life. He makes you feel the futility, the resignation, the hopelessness. Hope never really creeps in but some times are more bearable than others. He makes you realize how nonsensical it all was at the beginning, how certain this wouldn’t, couldn’t last. All would be back to normal soon. And he makes you shudder to realize this could be any one of us, plucked out of our lives without warning or preparation, and never to return to them as they were.

Cold Crematorium is riveting. It’s dreadful and you have to look away, take a breath, but then you can’t help but look back. Everyone – or everyone of a certain age at least – knows about the concentration camps in World War II and the horrors inflicted and endured. Debreczeni brings it up close. While reading I found myself looking for someone to blame, even while realizing they are all dead by now, even if they lived beyond the end of the war, and knowing you can’t just hate “all Germans.” But Debreczeni’s words bring up so much emotion they make you want to do something, to prevent what has sadly already happened.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of Cold Crematorium. Powerful, a read not to be missed. I voluntarily leave this review; all opinions are my own. ( )

5 stars, Horrors

COLD CREMATORIUM
Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz
by Jozsef Debreczeni

Jozsef Debreczeni barely survived the Land of Auschwitz. He was able to tell the world of the horrors he and the other prisoners experienced there. We should all always remember and not allow it to happen again.

Book quotes: ..."where the people of this tightly locked train of hell were transformed into animals." "The Nazis are not only murderers. They are also cowards." These quotes cause a lump in my throat, to know that someone did horrifying things to other humans.

I received a complimentary copy of #ColdCrematorium from #StMartinsPress and #NetGalley I was not obligated to post a review.

#WWII #War #History #NonFiction #Memoir #Holocaust #Survivor @StMartinsPress ( )

forced-labor, WW2, Hungary, Germany, starvation, cruelty, infectious-disease, forced-imprisonment, death-camps, crematoria, cultural-diversity, cultural-heritage, culture-of-fear, historical-places-events, historical-setting, history-and-culture, human-rights, mass-murder, violence, victimization, inhumane*****

I was so revolted by the author's descriptions that I kept wanting to stop reading and skip right to the review. I did not. I took a (relatively) short break from the horrors and read on through to the end.
Remember those photos repeated in history books and TV where they show the living skeletons of men hanging onto the wire fences watching the allies enter the camps? Joseph was one of those men and, as a journalist, he wrote his memoir in his native language in 1950. This is a clear condemnation of man's inhumanity to man, diarrhea and all.
Well worth everyone's time to read and be repulsed. Never forget. Never again.
Paul Olchváry tackled the unbearable task of translating the author's 1950 original memoir into English.
I requested and received an EARC from St. Martin's Press via NetGalley. Thank you. ( )