Cold Crematorium: Reporting from The Land of Auschwitz
Eighty years after the end of the Holocaust, we may think we know every chilling detail about the camps and their horrors. And yet one of 2024’s most notable books was the first translation into English of Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz, a horrific account of Auschwitz and other camps by journalist Jozsef Debreczeni, published in Hungarian in 1950 but never translated into English until now. A conversation with Debreczeni’s nephew Alexander Bruner, who was instrumental in resurrecting his uncle’s Holocaust memoir, literary scholar Susan Suleiman and Moment book editor Amy E. Schwartz about the evolving canon of Holocaust memory. In commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
One thought on “Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz with Alex Bruner, Susan Rubin Suleiman and Amy E. Schwartz”
Regarding Alexander Bruner’s citation of Tobias Buck about the voluntary nature of SS and German guards working in concentration camps and death camps, Hannah Arendt made a similar point in Eichmann in Jerusalem.
A request to work elsewhere was not met with punishment.
Cold Crematorium is astounding. The writing is breath taking. I forgot that I was reading a memoir only translated into English for the first time a year ago.