Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz

József Debreczeni arrived in Auschwitz in 1944. Had he been selected to go left, his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the "lucky" ones, he was sent tot he right, which led to twelve horrifying months of slave labor in a series of camps, ending in the "cold crematorium"—the so-called hospital of the camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work awaited execution. But as Soviet and Allied troops closed in, local Nazi commanders—anxious about the possible consequences of outright murder—decided to leave the remaining prisoners to die in droves rather than send them directly to the gas chambers.