The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary / ERNŐ SZÉP / TRANSLATED BY JOHN BÁTKI / WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DEZSŐ TANDORI / Central European University Press, 1994 / Paperback

ISBN-13: 9781858660110 / 978-1858660110 

ISBN-10: 1858660114

Printed in Hungary

Pages in 196

Hungary 1944: By early June Adolf Eichmann has succeeded in deporting over 400,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz, Over the summer the protection afforded by neutral states saves the lives of thousands, among them the poet, playwright and novelist Ernő Szép. Then, on 15 October, comes the Nazi- assisted Arrow Cross takeover. Six days later the 60-year-old writer, along with all the other men in the apartment house, is dragged away for forced labour. The Smell of Humans recapitulates the events following the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, and then narrates the 19-day story of the forced march, the prison camp at the brick factory, the digging of trenches outside Budapest, the round-the-clock exposure to the elements and to the whims of the guards (ranging from taunts to summary executions), until the release of the author three weeks later, when the regular army took the labourers out of the hands of the Arrow Cross henchmen.

Primarily a piece of creative writing and autobiographical literature of a very distinctive Central European kind, this detailed and imaginative short memoir is also an important document of the Holocaust in Hungary in 1944. What is unique is Szép's tone, a meld of stupefaction and irony. Without overt condemnation or succumbing to despair, he somehow manages to describe, in precise detail, a series of events along progressively grosser stages of infamy. These daily mounting horrors acquire an additional intensity generated by the author's wide-eyed, childlike refusal to accept the fact of man's inhumanity to man.

The last of more than thirty volumes published in Szép's lifetime, this beautifully crafted memoir introduces one of the great voices of twentieth- century Hungarian literature to readers everywhere. Translator John Bátki provides a biographical note on Szép and an essay is contributed by the Hungarian poet Dezső Tandori, the author of several works celebrating the human and literary stature of Ernő Szép.

• Publisher: Central European University Press
• Publication Date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1858660114
• ISBN 13: 9781858660110
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 196