“Vengeance” by K. Tzetnik (pen name of Yehiel De-Nur), a survivor of the Nazi extermination camps. Published by Sifriyat Tarmil. First edition, first printing. Israel, 1981. Dedicated and signed copy by the author under his real name “De-Nur” – Shana Tova blessing: “To Rafi Grintzweig and family, Gmar Chatima Tova, Y. De-Nur”.
In this book, K. Tzetnik depicts the story of an Auschwitz survivor who comes to Eretz Israel and rebuilds his life. The new life itself is a form of vengeance for what the Nazis did to him in the old world of the Holocaust. When the book was published, Prof. Bar Hillel wrote about it in the newspaper Ha’aretz: “The novel before us tells of an individual who arose like the phoenix from the ashes of an entire burnt-out diaspora”. Elie Wiesel wrote about the book: “The author – who even erased his own name from his books – showed in his works what happened through and through, within the realm of darkness. If we wish to know the specific fate and unique psychology of the survivors – we must read this book”.
Yehiel De-Nur (Feiner) [1909-2001] was a survivor of the Nazi extermination camps who wrote extensively about the Holocaust, best known for his “Salamandra, chronicle of a Jewish family in the twentieth century”. De-Nur was known by the pen name “K. Tzetnik” – a term meaning “concentration camp prisoner”. De-Nur began writing about the Holocaust shortly after surviving the death camps while staying at a British army camp near Naples, Italy. He gave the manuscript of his first book to Eliyahu Goldenberg, a soldier in the Jewish Brigade, to have it published in Israel. De-Nur did not include the author’s name, explaining to the soldier: “Those who went to the crematoria wrote this book! Write their name: K. Tzetnik”. This became his literary name thereafter. De-Nur is mainly remembered for his collapse minutes after beginning his testimony at the Eichmann trial. After falling to the ground while describing the horrors of the Holocaust, the judges had to adjourn the session and De-Nur was removed from the courtroom on a stretcher and hospitalized for six months. His testimony and the incident in court, especially being the first time his identity was revealed to the Israeli and global public as the man behind K. Tzetnik, became one of the defining symbols of the Eichmann trial that came to characterize the memory of the Holocaust era. De-Nur authored many books dealing with the memory of the Holocaust.
108 p. Very good condition.