Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

by József Debreczeni

33031. That’s my number. Starting now, I’m no longer me, but 33031. Much more a number than, say, an inmate with a life sentence, whose identity and possessions are kept in a prison office. I was never one for numbers. I didn’t believe in their magic. My measure of value has always been words. My capacity to remember numbers is so weak that I’ve forgotten my own phone number at times. And yet, now, the sole distinguishing mark of my future existence is etched into me within moments. The family and given names among the voluminous data on my birth certificate, and the nicknames by which my mother and my sweetheart once called me, disappear. Dreiunddreissignulleinunddreissig—33031—is what I’m called from now on. In this alone, and in nothing else, am I different from 74516 or 125993.