This outstanding, long lost account reveals the fate of Hungary’s Jews in vivid, stomach-turning detail. By Adam LeBor
Old Mr Mandel, the carpenter, was one of the first to die on the train from Backa Topola, northern Serbia, to Auschwitz. For 60 years he had smoked 50 cigarettes a day. At first, crammed into the cattle truck, Mandel had “stared, blankly, deliriously at the surging mass of people all around”, Jozsef Debreczeni writes in his outstanding, vividly observed Holocaust memoir. Mandel’s cigarettes, like his money and jewellery, had been confiscated. But the decades-long habit somehow continued. Debreczeni watched as Mandel’s hand moved back and forth, as though still holding a cigarette. He raised his fingers and pursed his lips to puff the imaginary smoke. Then, after a while, Mandel’s head tilted to the side. His hands lay still.
