A brilliant testimony of one woman’s Catholic faith in the midst of the hands of an absolute evil power
January 2020 — This is not just another book about Auschwitz after thousands of accounts have told the horrors of the Nazi death camps. From the foreword by Abbot Denis Farkasfalvy, “This book is an autobiographical sketch, written by a woman who never wanted to write her memoirs, who in fact never wanted anything but to live her life—her vocation—to the fullest as she saw it unfolding in the worst decade of the twentieth century.” Honoring the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Paraclete Press is privileged to release The Auschwitz Journal: A Catholic Story from the Camps by Klára Kardos (ISBN 978-1-64060-488-9│January 2020│Trade paperback│144 pp│$16.00).
When Nazi Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944 violent persecution of the Jews began, including taking hundreds of thousands of people to concentration camps. It did not help Klára Kardos that she was Catholic: because of her Jewish background, she was taken to Auschwitz in June 1944 at the age of 24. Klára survived the horror of death camps and was liberated a year later. Years after her return to Hungary, at the request of her friends, she wrote down her experiences. This is her story.
Klára Kardos was born in 1920 and died in 1984. Her parents were Jewish, but her mother converted to Catholicism before Klára was born, and Klára was baptized Catholic as a baby. She never married. She was an extraordinary individual. She spoke several languages and wrote in Hungarian in a beautiful literary style. After her liberation from Auschwitz, for years she lived in communist Hungary. During the 1970s, she immigrated to Austria and there dedicated her life to the service of the Catholic Church by writing, translating, and editing religious literature.
Fr. Julius D. Leloczky, O.Cist. (translator) is a Cistercian monk and priest, born in Hungary, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1964. He lives at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas and taught in the abbey preparatory school there for over forty years.
For interviews with Fr. Julian or review copies of the book, please contact Publicist Rachel McKendree at rachelm@paracletepress.com or 1-800-451-5006 ext 301.