An affecting memoir of the Holocaust by a noted Hungarian author,
with many an unusual twist. Born in 1895, Zsolt had published ten
novels and four plays by the time a right-wing government came to
power in Hungary, the product of "folksy populists . . . who
decried urban Western civilization and championed a chauvinistic
system based on the alleged strength and purity of an unspoiled
Magyar race rooted in the Hungarian countryside." Regrettably,
Zsolt was an urban Jew, and though he had served the emperor with
distinction in WWI, he found himself a target. Because it was, at
least superficially, a full partner with Nazi Germany, Hungary got
to set its own rules, which did not include exterminating its
Jews-at least at first. Zsolt was thus sent to the countryside, and
then into Ukraine, as a laborer. "I was thoroughly trained in
gravedigging out there," he writes, waiting with his fellow
prisoners to clean up after Hungarian soldiers, White Ukrainian
commandos, and Nazi troops as they burned villages and gunned down
the fleeing inhabitants, who "tumble all over the ground, into the
glowing ashes." Zsolt writes of the daily torments of the region's
Jews, who sensed that something worse was on the way but for the
time being had to withstand the greedy scheming of neighbors
outside the shtetls and ghettos and, as the author recounts it, the
excesses of Nazi martinets and fascist petty officials; as one SS
officer berates a young rabbi, in one memorable scene, a Hungarian
police captain watches "with the expression of a pedantic official,
who is not responsible for the matter in hand, but who doesn't
disapprove of what's going on." But the victim refuses to relent,
and, as Zsolt writes, "It made no difference, but the rabbi won,"
which sends the Nazi officer into a foul humor: "He felt as
uncomfortable about looking his audience in the eye as an actor who
feels everything has gone wrong that day." Vignettes of hell: a
valuable account of daily life under Hungarian fascism-banned for
four decades even under Communist rule. (Kirkus Reviews)
Nine Suitcases was originally published in Haladas in weekly
instalments. The first instalment appeared on 30 May 1946, and the
last on 27 February 1947. Concentrating on his experiences in the
ghetto of Nagyvarad and as a forced labourer in the Ukraine, Zsolt
provides not only a rare insight into Hungarian fascism, but a
shocking exposure of the cruelty, indifference, selfishness,
cowardice and betrayal of which human beings - the victims no less
than the perpetrators - are capable in extreme circumstances. Apart
from being one of the earliest writers on the Holocaust, Zsolt is
also one of the most powerful: he bears comparison with Primo Levi,
Elie Wiesel or Imre Kertesz. accomplished novelist and a highly
skilled journalist. He reports and analysizes the appalling events,
almost immediately after they occurred, with exceptional freshness
and a devastating blend of angry despair and cool detachment. For
all the brilliant imaginative qualities of the writing, the crucial
facts are authentic. Zsolt was spared Auschwitz, but he witnessed,
or suffered, some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust
elsewhere. Set in a very dark period of modern European history,
interspersed with moments of grotesque farce, grim irony and
occasional memories of human kindness, his nightmarish but
meticulously realistic chronicle of smaller and larger crimes
against humanity is as riveting as it is horrifying.
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