On Tisha B’Av, I usually try to read something about the Holocaust, or another tragedy of Jewish history. This year, I read the recently translated memoir of Jozsef Debreczeni, Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz. What is unique about Debreczeni’s memoir is that he was a practicing journalist before the war, giving him a skill that made his testimony particularly powerful.
Debreczeni was a journalist living in Hungary with his wife and parents when he was deported, with much of the rest of the Hungarian Jewish population, in 1944. At Auschwitz, he was separated from his wife and parents who were killed immediately. He was moved to one of the work camps that was part of the “Land of Auschwitz,” a term that both describes the vastness of the industrial complex that was built up around the main camp, and the senseless culture of violence that the Nazi’s created.
Debreczeni’s memoir, written in the 1950s, reminded me of Primo Levi’s writings, even as their experiences were painfully too common. Both were incredibly attentive to the characters (a term used with both meanings of the word in mind) in their Holocaust world, and Debreczeni especially so. And, like Levi, the longer the camp experience went on, the more narrow his life became, and the narrative with it.
Debreczeni’s subtle observations, what he notices that others may have missed, are part of what makes the narrative so powerful. Here are a few examples.
- “The work (in the subcamps) is carried out by three companies. The Waldenburg branch of the Georg Urban Civil and Structural Engineering AG leases most of the digging work; Keman AG drills tunnels; and Baugesellschaft builds the structures in what is planned to be a sprawling city of barracks.” In this short description, Debreczeni implicates the Germans, through their giant industrial companies, in the terror that was Auschwitz, even as it happened in Poland, far from the German heartland. There are, he implicitly points out, no excuse of “We didn’t know.”
- He later notes, “For my labor, the company pays Hitler’s state two marks a day to cover my ‘board’ and my ‘apparel’, and I harbor no illusions that I won’t have to earn this sum with blood.”
- After meeting someone new, he asked the person’s name. “My name was Farkas.” Not “is,” but “was.” The “inmate” has absorbed the message of the Nazi overlords that he is now but a number, part of the process of dehumanization.
Also like Levi, the reader is introduced to an exceptionally cruel world. And yet, within it, there are people whose humanity and generosity comes through at surprising moments. Why they defy the norm is never clear, though the contrast makes one both more hopeful and despairing about humanity.
Just Because I Liked It:
- On a more positive note, watch this “sweet” short documentary on why Sweet Caroline became a theme song for the Boston Red Sox.
- רמזי אלול (trans. Elul Hints), by Rav Eyal Vered, is one of my favorite books, especially this time of year. There is a chapter for each day of Elul titled by a pasuk that references the month of Elul. He then goes on to explore how the theme of that pasuk relates to teshuva and one’s preparation for Rosh Hashana. It’s incredible, and I can’t recommend it enough.