<b><i>Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz</i></b> is a chilling factual account by József Debreczeni of his lived experiences in Auschwitz during and after WW2. Originally published in Hungarian in 1950, this reformat and re-release in translation from Macmillan on their St. Martin's imprint is 256 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links, which is helpful for finding information and names/references quickly and efficiently.

This is an absolute gut-punch of a memoir. The author was a trained journalist and his factual observations and lived experiences are wrenching, terrifying, and depressing. The scale of the casual brutality was mind boggling, so outrageously far outside comprehension that it's difficult to even place it in context.

Suppressed and ignored for more than 70 years, it's now translated and published in 15 new languages. This is emphatically *not* a happy read. It is, however, an incredibly important read (especially given the current state of world politics and the depredations occurring in large swathes of the planet).

Although not annotated, it will find a place in important contemporary holocaust literature. An important book. The translation work by Paul Olchváry is seamless, and it flows very well without distraction from the stark horrific reality of the subject matter.

Five stars. A wide publication from a major publisher, it should find a place on every public and post-secondary library shelf, as well as for readers of history and the holocaust.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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 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.

5 stars Thank you to St Martins Press and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review. Republished January 23, 2024 (First published January 1, 1950) by St. Martin's Press.


Un-put-downable! There is no other word for this book. It is short - just 243 pages - however I read it in one sitting. That is something I rarely do, but I could not put this book down. The topic is horrific and heart breaking, but the need to read on is powerful.

The author, an Hungarian Jew, spent years in German prison camps -in extermination camps - starting off with Auschwitz. The story takes you from the first step onto the railroad car to the splitting of the prisoners, between walking and traveling by truck and what that meant, to being liberated from Dornhau, after a near fatal bout of typhoid.

There is nothing happy or pleasant about this story, but it details a time in our history that must be remembered. It must be remembered so that we never again put in office a monster, a tyrant that thinks he is a God and able to do anything at his own whim. Dictatorship is a crime in itself. We need to be diligent and make sure we never see the likes of a modern day Hitler.

As an inmate of Auschwitz, Jozsef found himself forced to work in many camps as a slave to the Nazi regime. Losing his health found him sent to Dornhau, a camp for those unable to work any more. In deplorable, unimaginably filthy surroundings, he managed to live to tell his horrific story. Plainly and starkly written, this is a testament to the human spirit.

Thank you Netgalley for the book in exchange for a honest review. As a lover of history, this book was very depressing to read at times due to the torture the people of the holocaust endured. However, the story was very well written and the author was great of telling what he went through. Would highly recommend this book for lovers of history and the holocaust.

Thank you to Net Galley for this e copy of Cold Crematorium by Josef Debreczeni in exchange for a honest review.This is a profound, chilling first hand account of the insides of Auschwitz and Dornhau, a slave camp where the author was sent to towards the end of World War 2.?This is a perfect example of man’s inhumanity to man where everyone from the Nazis to fellow slaves treat each other horribly and are always looking to steal from one another.The author’s account gives a very accurate yet chilling account of this terrible period of history.

This memoir, from a holocaust survivor, was a difficult but important book to read, especially in these times of increasing antisemitism. The horrors that were inflicted upon the Jews during WWII were horrific. They were vividly described in this memoir. At times I had to put the book down to focus on something else. It is so very important that we never forget.

This book is worth every minute reading. The details and the atmosphere that Debreczeni portrays is more astonishing than I expected. Most people who have read memoirs, or historical fiction, or histories, involving WWII and the Nazi regime, know enough about the atrocities to be familiar with the events. This book does a superb job relaying these details of the events while including the feelings of being in this sudden setting of your life being ripped away. The shock of the reality of grandparents who had spent the week before fixing the weekend meal or watching the children playing outside, to now facing the concentration camps and the terror and loss of human dignity that this implied, is captured within the words and pages of this book. The author incredibly captures the sense of horror and dread that occurred as the trains took people to the concentration camps and the uncertainty of what would happen within those boundaries.
Highly recommend!
#ColdCrematorium #NetGalley #StMartinsPress

Written before I was born, this story still resonates across the generations. We've all heard, read or was taught the stories of the Nazi concentration camps, Jozef Debreczeni LIVED this story. I found myself both horrified by the treatment of the prisoners and deeply impressed by the courage and kindness they showed in the face of adversity. As the last of the WWII generation dies, the rest of us must never forget that evil exists and it's all too easy for people to look the other or not get involved. The world must remain vigilant in this era of terrorism.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

Every time I read a book about the Holocaust I always learn something new. Debreczeni had a really good understanding of the inner workings of the labor camp & that is shown throughout this book. This book was translated very well. I've read a handful of other translations & I feel like this has been the best one I've read so far. Debreczeni gets to know all the people he meets along the way, giving you a more personal relationship with the horrors of the Holocaust instead of trying to glaze over it. He helps give faces & names to people instead of them just being "Jewish" or "Polish" & etc.

Despite all signs pointing to defeat, in 1944 the Nazis continued to send people in droves to concentration camps. A Hungarian man József Debreczeni ends up in Dörnhau where even the Nazis don’t dare to linger, because it’s essentially death in a building. Available for the first time in English, more than 70 years after its original publication, Debreczeni shares the harrowing, stark account of what it’s like to be left to perish at the edge of the Nazi world in his memoir Cold Crematorium.

Although some Jews in Hungary managed to escape the onslaught of Nazism, native poet and journalist József Debreczeni is scooped up in a major “raid” that includes his parents and wife. All of them are put on trains to concentration camps, separated from one another and traveling with hundreds of others. Rumors are rampant as is fear. It’s 1944, and Hitler has been in power long enough that whispers of the camps have traveled far and wide. Debreczeni and the other prisoners have an inkling of what’s waiting for them; when they get to Auschwitz, though, they realize that everything they’d heard was only the beginning.

After arriving in the reality of Nazi hatred and debasement, Debreczeni, like the other prisoners, is given a choice. Ride in a truck transport or walk to the next camp. Debreczeni resists the urge of the comfort of riding the long distance, electing to walk, and just as well. The initial culling of “go left” or “go right” sent the hundreds of prisoners going right straight to the gas chambers. This next round sees him live yet again; those going in the trucks are fated to die right away as well.

Over the next 12 months, however, Debreczeni wonders whether his fate is any better. He’s moved from one labor camp to the next where he’s treated like he doesn’t deserve to live. Worse, he discovers that the Nazis have used psychological warfare in the most clever way: within the camps, hierarchies have set up some Jewish prisoners as having a small measure of power over others. The tiny dose of control given to those Jews encourages them to behave as badly as the real jailers do with the same levels of abuse.

Eventually Debreczeni’s health breaks down, and the camp higher-ups decide to ship him to Dörnhau. This camp-of-last-resort is informally known as the “cold crematorium.” No gas showers from the ceilings, but death is present everywhere. The conditions are beyond inhumane with waste flowing freely on the floor between beds holding three or four men each. They inevitably share lice, tuberculosis, and the ultimate death knell of hundreds: typhus.

Debreczeni describes the black market utilized by the prisoners for things like an extra ration of food or tobacco and doesn’t mince words. His account ends with the liberation of the camp, but rather than a joyous, heady experience the book ends much the same way Debreczeni’s time did: limping along, barely making it to a new place. This deliberate tone will leave readers sobered by the fact that when Hitler was defeated, it didn’t mean everything immediately became happy again. The prisoners in the camps weren’t freed right away. The rollout of liberation took time and efforts by Allied soldiers, and in the meantime Debreczeni and the other prisoners fought—and sometimes lost to—death.

The book was published in 1950, a mere five years after the end of the war, in Hungarian, and finally English-language speakers are able to read it as well. Unlike historical fiction, the book doesn’t wrap up everything in a satisfying way. It shows that war is messy and drawn out and takes a lot longer to end than signing an agreement.

Because the book is a translation, occasionally it bounces from past to present and then back to past tense again within the same paragraph or even sentencew. In small sections, the change is a little confusing. Also, even with the grave subject matter, readers would have benefited from knowing just a little more about Debreczeni’s life after the war.

Regardless, firsthand accounts such as this one, unsavory parts and all, should be mandatory reading. The book should also serve as a warning for the lengths to which people will go for an ideology.

It is unfathomable the depths of depravity, deprivation and hatred of your fellow human beings can reach. Yet, József Debreczeni, in his recently found and translated memoir of his time in various Auschwitz camps, details the atrocities visited upon him and his fellow slave/prisoners with such clarity that revulsion seeps out of every page. Debreczeni, a reporter, observed everything around him. The writing is brilliant. This is a book that must be read and seen as a lesson for humanity.

The book starts with a long journey from Hungary in an overcrowded cattle car to Auschwitz. Selected to go to the right, Debreczeni is stripped, showered, shorn and marched to his first billet. What he learned quickly is that newcomers were frozen out from inches on the ground to rest and more importantly, the vast hierarchy of loathsome Jewish prisoners who control everything, most especially food. As a slave laborer at several camps, he had various duties including working underground to create a complex enclave for Hitler to hide.

After working long hours and standing at twice daily roll calls and at the end of his tether, he volunteered to go to a death camp. Unfortunately, he wound up at the cold crematorium. In all of my readings and knowledge of the Holocaust, I never heard this term. It refers to a “hospital “ where slave labor is sent to die by disease, starvation, deprivation, beatings etc. It was there bedridden, starving and sick, Debreczeni witnessed the worst abuse by fellow Jews. As I said, unfathomable!

How Debreczeni survived and how he committed his story to paper is remarkable. Please read and share with everyone you know.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this advance copy.

Everyone should read this book, as difficult as it is to read --it is a memoir of a journalist who had been sent to Auschwitz and survived to tell his story. This was first published in 1950 and finally has been translated and published in English. It is a very difficult read but critically important to bear witness to the atrocities from the Holocaust. I could not read it in one sitting but the descriptions and details and the sober account of what it was like is an important preservation of history so we never forget. An absolute must read.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

Emotional heart wrenching story of the levels of abuse the author suffered in the concentration camps.The horror of being dragged from camp to camp the torture that was inflicted on him and other prisoners.Not an easy book to read but a very important one.#netgalley #st.Martins

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.

I was a little hesitant to read this novel as I was expecting a heavy draining read due to the subject matter of the memoir. I was very surprised at how easy this book was to read in the sense that it was able to show the cruelty and horror of the Holocaust eloquently, beautifully, in a relatable way. It is a heavy novel but to not read it to protect yourself from the sadness and horror of this point in history would be a disservice because these things need to be remembered. The author writes of strength and courage as well as the darkness. Overall a good read, i recommend this beautiful, haunting book to everyone. Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced copy and opportunity.

I have read a few books about WWII and the Holocaust, but this memoir is totally different. Written by Debreczeni, a prisoner at first Aschwitz, and moving to three different camps, and translated to English, it's the first one that gives a look at the day to day life in the concentration camps. Even though I knew life was terrible in the concentration camps, I learned just how terrible it truly was. From the food, to the roll calls, to the work, and to the beatings and torture these prisoners had to endure. It's a book that gives a look into what the Jews of the Holocaust actually went through. I never realized the kind of work the prisoners did. It was back breaking, plus the ones first at the camps, had to build their housing. A book I think everyone needs to read. If we hide and don't learn from our past, it's bound to repeat.

Tentative Publishcation Date: January 23, 2024

Thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin's Press and McMillan for the E-ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

😊 Happy Reading 😊

#netgalley
#stmartinspress
#mcmillianpublishing
#coldcrematorium

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.

Debreczeni's powerful memoir is just a reminder that we as humans, are still learning shocking details about people's lives in the concentration camps during World War II. I recently visited Dachau in December 2022 and to be able to see everything in person is really humbling. What the campers were put through for sometimes up to multiple years - disease, starvation, persecution, abuse - is mind-boggling to me. Debreczeni was one of many prisoners that had been mobilized amongst multiple concentration camps, and with a severe typhoid outbreak, was on the brink of death right before liberation of the camps. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to read additional memoirs about the Holocaust, the caste system within the concentration camps, gain first-hand knowledge of the day-to-day activities of a camp.

This was a very interesting read. From the author, we get an inside look at what it was like to live in the concentration camps that the German's were using for those who they considered undesirables. We follow Jozsef through his journey, from his arrival, to the work details, moves to other camps, and the brutalities in which they were forced to endure.

This was one of those you hate to love it books. The material itself with stick with you long after you finish reading, but the will to live, to survive is there. I admired the author for his frank and honest look at what it was like. I am sure that there are things that he did not write about. However, to get a look at the camps through his eyes, and to see the unwavering conviction in which they continued to hope for freedom, and to survive is unlike any other book I have read.

Ghastly, haunting, and brutal - this book will continue to stay with you.