Nine Suitcases: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Bela Zsolt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 2004

Suppressed by the Communists for nearly forty years and never before published in English, Nine Suitcases is one of the first—and greatest—memoirs of the Holocaust ever written. Originally published in Hungary in weekly installments starting in 1946, it tells the harrowing story of Béla Zsolt’s experiences in the ghetto and as a forced laborer in the Ukraine. It gives not only a rare insight into Hungarian fascism, but also a shocking exposure to 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 Kertész. Both an accomplished novelist and a highly skilled journalist, he was reporting and analyzing these appalling events soon after they occurred with exceptional clarity and a devastating blend of angry despair and cool detachment.

Zsolt was spared Auschwitz, but he witnessed and suffered some of the worst atrocities of the Holocaust elsewhere; his nightmarish but meticulously realistic chronicle of smaller and larger crimes against humanity is as riveting as it is horrifying. The rediscovery and publication of Nine Suitcases is an event of great historical importance.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hungarian Jewish novelist and journalist Zsolt (who died in 1949) experienced more than his share of suffering, as documented in this Holocaust memoir published in English for the first time (it originally appeared in serial form in 1946 in a magazine Zsolt founded). Born in 1895, Zsolt was well known in intellectual circles during the 1920s and '30s as a liberal political journalist. This book highlights his years in Ukraine as a forced laborer for the Hungarian army, the months he spent in a ghetto in Nagyvárad awaiting deportation to Auschwitz and his escape from the ghetto in the spring of 1944 (he eventually made it to Switzerland with his wife). As one of the first Holocaust memoirs, this piercing account displays a raw freshness that is as vivid as it is horrifying. It lacks the genre's usual displays of hope and strength, focusing instead on humanity's basest instincts, as expressed by the brutal Hungarian gendarmes and by their Jewish victims as well. Noting his inability to write of the horrors he experienced, Szolt reports, "I resisted my own experiences with elementary force, like a man who tries to overcome a malignant tumor that pokes conspicuously through his skin by not looking...." Clearly, Szolt's writing capacity returned with a vengeance after the war; his powerful, poignant honesty shows little mercy to his readers' sensibilities.
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* The author, a Jew, was born in northern Hungary in 1895 and moved to Budapest in 1920. During the next two decades, Zsolt became one of Hungary's most prolific writers, producing 10 novels and four plays. A sophisticated bohemian, he spent much of his life in the fashionable coffee houses among writers, artists, and intellectuals, conducting political and cultural campaigns. In 1942 he was sent to the Ukraine, but his influential friends in Budapest succeeded in bringing him home in 1943, where he was thrown into a notorious political prison and detained there for four months. In 1944 Zsolt and his wife escaped from a Hungarian ghetto, went underground, and eventually found a safe haven in Switzerland. They returned to Hungary in 1945. His mother, brothers, and sisters; his wife's parents; and her 13-year-old daughter by her first husband were murdered in Auschwitz. Nine Suitcases was originally published in weekly installments in 1946 and 1947 in a Hungarian journal; in 1980, the compilation was published as a book. Concentrating mainly on his experiences as an inmate of the ghetto of Nagyvarad and as a forced laborer in the Ukraine, the author provides not only a rare and perceptive insight into Hungarian fascism but also a horrifying exposure of the depths of the cruelty, indifference, cowardice, and betrayal of which human beings are capable. These horrors, interspersed with moments of grotesque farce, paint a nightmarish picture of a world without hope during the Holocaust--an important book, to be sure. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Schocken (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080524204X
• ISBN-13: 978-0805242041
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #673,982 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brutal, Gripping, Honest., January 10, 2005

By 

J. Kelley "dahozho" (Mid-Atlantic coast) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Nine Suitcases: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Written almost immediately following the end of WWII, there was no distance between M. Zsolt and his experiences.

Originally published as articles in a magazine, the force of the writing really slams into the reader from the beginning. M. Zsolt picks up his story in 1944 in the Nagyvarad ghetto. At that time, he had already been a slave ('forced labourer') for the Hugarian forces allied with the Nazis in the Ukraine, survived, freed, and then thrown into prison as a political prisoner. He is already in his late 40s, and a veteran of WWI.

What struck me in this memoir is the similarity of M. Zsolt's thinking about the horrors he endures and the writings of M. Wiesel. Both authors come to the conclusion that there are no words to communicate the experience, yet both realize they must attempt to do so.

I'm thankful that this memoir is now available in English (and the translator was actually with M. Zsolt in Bergen-Belsen as a boy).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Achievement, January 7, 2009

By 

Daniel W. Graf "retired professor and historian" (Virginia Beach, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nine Suitcases: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Bela Zsolt produced one of the finest Holocaust memoirs I have ever read. Like Primo Levi, he was a keen observer. He provides the reader with a magnificently detailed account of his thoughts and experiences as he is caught up in the horrors of the Nazi era. Moreover, he presents us with no stereotypes. You won't find unadulterated two-dimensional representations of good or evil in his narrative. These are fully developed human beings, complex, conflicted, and anguished. The result is a breathtaking view of the horrors mankind inflicts on itself in the worst of times.