Cold Crematorium Quotes

“I learn to walk. How strange … The first time around I learned to walk, I did so from my mother’s arms. Now it is the will to live that teaches me.”
― József Debreczeni, Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

“Medics are going up and down the bunk streets, calling out, in both Hungarian and German: “Halottakat bejelenteni! Toten anmelden! [Report the dead!]” The more jocular among us come up with a variation: “Report if you’re dead!” Reporting is always the responsibility of the immediate neighbors.”
― József Debreczeni, Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

“Horror is always kitsch. Even when it’s real.”
― József Debreczeni, Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

“Active collaboration was aided by the willful blindness of those who, despite living at or near the scene of the crime, would later claim to have seen nothing.”
― József Debreczeni, Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz

“This too is the Nazi way of doing things: it’s much simpler to lift a person out of his property than to take property away from a person. The procedure is more expedient and—most important—means less dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s, fewer formalities, and less administration”
― József Debreczeni, Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz