A lost classic of Holocaust literature translated for the first time--from journalist, poet and survivor József Debreczeni
"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 treasure...Debreczeni's memoir is a crucial contribution to Holocaust literature, a book that enlarges our understanding of 'life' in Auschwitz." --Wall Street Journal
"A literary diamond...A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi." --The Times of London
"It should be required reading." --Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated
"A timely reminder of man's inhumanity to man." --Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans
József Debreczeni, a prolific Hungarian-language journalist and poet, 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 labor in a series of camps, ending in the "Cold Crematorium"--the so-called hospital of the forced labor camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work awaited execution. But as Soviet and Allied troops closed in on the camps, local Nazi commanders--anxious about the possible consequences of outright murder--decided to leave the remaining prisoners to die in droves rather than sending them directly to the gas chambers.
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