Man of Ashes: (Texts and Contexts)

Salomon Isacovici was born to a farming family in western Romania. One day in 1940 his family woke as Hungarians, re-nationalised overnight by the changing borders of World War II. To other Hungarians they were Jews, and week by week their world grew worse. In 1944 the Germans arrived and Isacovici, his family, and every other Jew from his town were pushed into cattle cars and taken ever closer to the soot and smoke of Auschwitz. He became a man of ashes. Man of Ashes was first published in Mexico in 1990 as A7393: Hombre de cenizas and was awarded the Fernando Jeno Prize. The English translation has been thoroughly revised in collaboration with Salomon Isacovici. Dick Gerdes is a professor of Spanish at George Mason University. He won the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for his translation of Diamela Eltit's The Fourth World (Nebraska 1995).

About the Author :
Salomon Isacovici died in 1998. Dick Gerdes is a professor of Spanish at George Mason University. Man of Ashes was first published in Mexico in 1990 as A7393: Hombre de cenizas and was awarded the Fernando Jeno Prize.

Review :
"I began reading [Man of Ashes] and felt moved as I do whenever I read personal memoirs by survivors. I have always believed in survivors' testimonies: they are unique. What they say about what was done to Jews by their enemies cannot be said by anyone else. Their personal experience must become part of Holocaust literature." - Elie Wiesel. "The first-person account of an Ecuadorian Holocaust survivor, ... Man of Ashes follows Isacovici from his childhood in Sighet, Romania, through the assassination of his parents and four siblings ... to his emigration in 1948 to Ecuador... At the heart of the book are tales of death and endurance at Auschwitz, Gross Rosen, Javorsno and other Nazi camps, and these scenes are filled with sharp insights into human suffering. What distinguishes Man of Ashes from most survivors' memoirs is its Latin American connection." - Ilan Stavans, The Forward. "A wrenching account of the German persecution and extermination of Eastern Europe's Jews." - Omaha World-Herald.