Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

by József Debreczeni

Yes, perhaps I was even prepared for something like this. Even back home I’d heard and read plenty of ghoulish stories about gas chambers and crematoriums. But this is different. Not hearsay. Not something read. Not a distant threat, but a reality rearing up right in front of me. A nearby reality. It can’t be even two hundred meters away. Its smoke strikes my nostrils. Maybe that’s why I just stand there staring, petrified,

The whole thing is beyond a doubt and yet unbelievable.

Kitsch. Horror is always kitsch. Even when it’s real.

Kitsch. HORR IS ALWAYS KITSCH

The mills of God grind slowly—those of the death camps, faster.

The mls of god grinddslowly

In a poem called “I Speak With My Father,” József asks, “Where is the bloody retribution? Don’t the heavens rage?… Who will avenge them?”