A chilling telling of a horrific piece of history. It should be mandatory readying. To judge this is to judge humanity.

Told in clear and concise words, and unemotional in tone, Cold Crematorium is one of the most wrenching and heartbreaking Holocaust memoirs I’ve ever read. The descriptions of life in the camps made me feel as if I were experiencing the horrors myself. It is as powerful as any of the works by Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi.

Apparently lost since it was published in Hungarian in 1950, and never translated, it is now being published for the first time in multiple languages. Cold Crematorium needs to be widely read, especially in view of the current rise in antisemitism.

My profuse thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for providing an ARC of this remarkable memoir.

How do you even review a book like this? A memoir from a Holocaust survivor which tells the horrific story of someone sent to Auschwitz and survived against all odds. The writing was a little dry in places and at times just relayed facts, names, and details but in those details you can picture the conditions that these people had to endure. A truly terrible experience that should not be forgotten.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free eARC of this book to read in exchange for my review!

Cold Crematorium by Jozsef Debreczeni reveals the atrocities of Nazi Germany through the keen prose of a journalist and the inspired words of a poet. This book is a must-read for older students and adults. It certainly belongs in the company of Wiesel, Frankl, Ten Boom, and more recently, Eger-- powerful witnesses to humanity's propensity for cruelty and the individual's ability to not only survive but also to bare its worst; lest, we never forget. We never repeat.
What Debreczeni does is capture the best and the worst of human behavior in the setting of Nazi war camps that can only compare to hell. Dedreczeni exposes the psychological, physical, and emotional effects on himself and fellow prisoners in the focused perspective of a journalist.
I have read and have taught the major works that comprise Holocaust literature. This memoir is different. Debreczeni in his candid journalistic objective perspective and his poet's sensitive wording reveals specific details about the Nazi methods of humiliation, manipulation, and cowardice. He does it through his personal experiences and the experiences of those alongside him. I came to care deeply about the author and his companions- some saints. Debreczeni also does not shy away from candidly describing the monsters of the death camps and the Nazi methods of creating them.
Cold Crematorium has prompted me to reflect on the importance of my individual behavior in any encounter with another person, no matter the circumstances. Perhaps this is the great purpose of this "lost" memoir finally being published in this day and time: each of us must take an honest appraisal of how we treat our neighbor...whoever it is.
I highly recommend this book.
Thank you, Netgalley, for letting me read this free copy in return for my honest review. I read the book within 48 hours, It is that good. It is that important.

5 stars

It feels so weird rating this book. True life horrors.
This is an incredibly difficult book to read, however it needs to be read in order to understand.

I’m not going to say more than this, this is by far one of the most well written holocaust books I ever ever read. It is emotional and yet there is still hope and triumph in the face of the most vile and evil experiences.

This is one of the best books I’ve read.from the POV of a Concentration Camp survivor, The book doesn’t give any flowery background; it starts out with the horrors of the trains heading to the camps. From the first page it never wavered from the honesty, brutality, hopelessness, and inhumanity of the treatment of prisoners by the camp guards, commanders, SS, kapos and fellow prisoners. The author’s ability to bring the reader right into the middle of the muck, as if we were there too, is important for continue to edicate future generations.

One of the most well written books about the death camps that I have read - kudos to the author and translator. This book is hard to read and I had to break reading time up over several days in order to digest it. The book offered me different information on the death camps.

A very powerful book. This should be required reading especially considering the events transpiring in the world these days. The ignorant and, frankly sickening, rhetoric and actions of many is an unfortunate reiteration of the horror described on the pages of this memoir. If we do not condemn it here and now, if we do not fight it with our utmost effort, we are doomed to repeat the past in all its horror. While this is a diificult read, it is an important read; one should find it difficult. It is horrifying, it is terrifying, it is disturbing... and it should be. Never again -- we should all vow never again.

This is a moving, detailed Auschwitz Holocaust memoir. The novelist, poet, and journalist on May 1, 1944, was deported to Auschwitz after three years as a forced laborer. His chronological personal history covers the camps final year and is told in a plain, direct, effective language. I personally have not read another such memoir that with such granularity covers such a long period from the well-known initial, left or right triage admittance to final dissolution when the "gray ones" (guards) melted away cravenly from the advancing Soviet army.

The cold crematorium of the book’s title is a “hospital” the Nazi “work” camp Dörnhau, where the author (a reporter by trade) was sent after a brief stint in Auschwitz in 1944. As the scare quotes should indicate, there was no healing done in the “hospital,” a freezing cold, abandoned factory where Jews who were too sick or weak to work were sent to die. (I also hate the terms “concentration” and “work” camps, since the official Nazi policy was to work Jews to death, making all of their “camps” death camps). Debreczeni, a Hungarian-Jewish newspaper reporter, relates his experience in a matter-of-fact tone that forces readers to witness suffering on a level many can’t imagine.

There has been a steady trickle of holocaust memoirs and war-time journals (like Rywka’s Diary) that present firsthand, unfiltered accounts that are very different from many of the commercially-successful holocaust novels popular among readers, many of which seek to mythologize the suffering of Jews, whitewashing it and framing it with life-affirming lessons that allow the reader to walk away feeling hopeful about the state of the world.

There is no hope for the Jews Debreczeni met during the time he’s imprisoned by the Nazis. It is a hard memoir to read, but one that, I think, portrays a more true-to-life (and death) depiction of the Shoah than most readers will be accustomed to.

This is a brutally real story about a man’s experiences as a prisoner of the Germans in World War II. He suffered through labor camps and then a hospital camp nicknamed The Cold Crematorium. Holocaust books are hard to read and this one is no exception. But I feel that they are necessary to remind us of the cost so many people endured. I really liked the style of writing in this one.

Sometimes stories can lose some of their message in translation but not this one. This story is very raw, honestly brutal and an amazing tale of human survival. This is a book that everyone should read. It was a privilege to read his story. Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Hang your head and cry that humans are capable of such evil. This book is a hard read as we follow Jozsef Debrecszeni, a jew, as he makes his way through the Nazi death machine. Concentration Camps are their own brand of evil; you can not claim to be human and let people starve, put them in rags in freezing weather, beat them 1/2 to death, and then kill anyone that does not work at your impossible pace. Stripping them of their humanity and dignity says nothing about them and everything about you! And to all the companies the profited off this awful thing, shame on you. The book is called Cold Crematorium, but I let you find out what that means. I am glad this author survived and lived to tell the tale. In the end, humanity won they day. It is just so sad so many died and suffered before that happened.

Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz by József Debreczeni is an unforgettable memoir that I will never forget.

This is an unforgettable, sobering, raw, real, and stunning memoir that is newly translated for a whole new collection of readers. Jozef’s story of his experiences through WWII is finally brought to light.

It is a telling that should never, ever be forgotten, and he is a true survivor. I a, so glad I read this.

4.5/5 stars

Thank you NG and St Martin’s Press for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 1/23/24.