Yehiel De-Nur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yehiel De-Nur or Dinur, ('De-Nur' means 'of the fire' in Hebrew) was born Yehiel Feiner on May 16, 1909, in Sosnowiec (Poland), near the German border. He died of cancer in Tel Aviv on July 17, 2001.
During World War II De-Nur spent two years as a prisoner in Auschwitz. In 1945, he moved to British-mandate Palestine (later Israel) and became a writer-historian survivor who wrote several works in Hebrew under the pen name Ka-Tzetnik 135633 (sometimes listed as "K. Tzetnik"). Ka-Tzetnik means "Concentration Camper," 135633 was De-Nur's concentration camp number.
His work documented the history of Nazi atrocities. He wrote under a pseudonym for some time before his identity was revealed at the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Before giving testimony, De-Nur fainted.
Among his most famous works was The House of Dolls (1956), which described the "Joy Division," a Nazi system that kept Jewish women as sex slaves in concentration camps. He suggests that the subject of the book was his younger sister, who did not survive the Holocaust. In his book Piepel, about the Nazis' sexual abuse of young boys, he suggests the subject of this book was his younger brother, who also died in a concentration camp [1]. Two decades later, singer Ian Curtis named his band Joy Division after the brothels described in The House of Dolls.[citation needed]
In 1976, because of recurring nightmares and depression, he subjected himself to a form of psychedelic psychotherapy from Dr. Jan Bastiaans that included the use of LSD; the visions experienced during this therapy became the basis for his book, Shivitti [2].
[edit] Bibliography
- Atrocity (translated by Nina De-Nur)
- House of Dolls (translated from Hebrew by Moshe M. Kohn)
- Star Eternal (translated by Nina De-Nur)
- Shivitti: A Vision, ISBN 0-06-250870-9
- Piepel
