5-2024
Cuando crees que sabes mucho sobre la 2°guerra mundial y sobre el holocausto, lees algo que te abre los ojos sobre lo mucho que ignoras.

La narración del protagonista es estremecedora, sin entrar en detalles morbosos.
El último año de guerra (1944), llega a Auschwitz, contando el viaje en tren, las condiciones y los días que dura.
Lo novedoso de la narración es cuando te detalla la vida en los campos, "las clases sociales", la supervivencia del día a día, las enfermedades, los trabajos, la falta de empatía... De humanidad. Y no hablo de los mandos nazis, sino de los propios prisioneros. Y hay que recordar que los campos de concentración no solo había judíos.

Crematorio frio es el lugar donde termina el protagonista. Todos conocemos las duchas de gas y los hornos crematorios, pero no siempre se deshacían de los seres humanos allí. Y en este libro te lo cuentan.
De forma fluida, amena (pese a la dureza), Jofsef cuenta sus vivencias. Es sorprendente que alguien pudiera sobrevivir a semejantes condiciones. Y lo más repugnante, es que entre los propios prisioneros, los que lograban algún poder/privilegio, se dedicarán a machacar a los compañeros, en vez de echar una mano. ( )

Recommended in the Economist, a harrowing, interesting and amazing report from a Hungarian Jewish reporter macerated by the Nazis. Very well written. Very interesting, and also astonishing. This book is as much a report on the role of the Cappos in the camps and how they exploited their weaker brethren in order to save themselves. Bt well beyond what would have been necessary for their own mere survival. ( )

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. ( )