“Like They Burned Everything that was Dear to Me and My World in the Crematorium of Auschwitz”

The author Yechiel Dinur, Sosnowiec – Tel Aviv

Among the few Holocaust survivors of Sosnowiec, was the well-known writer who became famous at the Eichmann trial, Yechiel Dinur (whose original surname was Feiner).

Yechiel chose a very meaningful pen name for himself: “K. Zetnik”, derived from “KZ”, the administrative abbreviation accepted by the Nazis for Konzentrationslager, meaning “concentration camp.”

Not many people know that Yechiel Feiner was an exceptional Torah scholar, one of the best students of the Chachmei Lublin yeshiva, and who was among the few elite students who was taughts in the secrets of the Torah from the head of the yeshiva.

Between the two world wars he was active within the Agudath Israel Youth and authored a book of poetry called Zvei-Un-Tzvantzik: Lieder (22 Poems).

The horrors of the Holocaust effected him greatly. He lost his entire family in the Holocaust and remained alone in the world.

After the Holocaust, he devoted himself to writing and his books became bestsellers worldwide. At the Eichmann trial, where he collapsed while giving his testimony, he gained worldwide publicity.

Dinur, collapses while giving his testimony at the Eichmann trial. On the left, his book “22 Poems,” torn the only surviving copy

After the war, whenever he learned of a copy of the book of poems in the National Library, a book he wrote and published before the Holocaust, K. Zetnik would come to the library, take out the book, and destroy it. From 1953 to 1993, he did this three times. In a letter he wrote in 1993 to Shlomo Goldberg, the manager of the library warehouse, after the third time he took out the book and asked for it to disappear from the world, he told about the first time he destroyed a copy:

“In 1953, during my stay in New York, I was informed that the ‘book’ by the writer who was exterminated in Auschwitz was in the National Library… I went to the library, presented my PAN (World Writers Union) certificate as a writer from Israel writing the life story of this exterminated writer, I received the book, I left the library, and I burned the book.”

“And I have another request for you: As a sign, I have attached here remnants of the ‘book,’ please, burn them like everything else that was dear to me and my world which was burned in the crematorium of Auschwitz.”

K. Zetnik did not want any remnants of his prior identity as the author, Yechiel Feiner, to remain. He therefore came time and time again to the library with one purpose: to destroy all memories of his creations as Yechiel Feiner prewar.

His testimony (at the trial) resonated throughout the world, and in a way it was the most dramatic and traumatic event in the country’s history.

And this is his testimony, which followed the prosecutor’s question, “What is the reason why you hid behind the name K. Zetnik?”

“It is not a literary name. I don’t see myself as a writer who writes fiction. This is a chronicle from Planet Auschwitz. I was there for about two years. Time does not exist there as it does here. Every fraction of a moment passes there on a different wheel of time. And the inhabitants of this planet had no names. They had no parents and no children. They didn’t dress the way they do here. They were not born there and did not give birth… They did not live according to the laws of the world here and did not die. Their name was the number K. Zetnik (i.e. their prisoner number).”

Years later, following the psychological treatment he underwent (which included hypnosis), he withdrew from the “other planet” concept:

“And then it was clear to me that Auschwitz is not another planet as I thought before. Auschwitz was not created by the devil, nor by G-d, but by man… Hitler was not a devil. You could enter a kindergarten, among fifty children there was one child named Adolf Hitler. He was a man… ‘I have placed before you life and death, blessing and curse – the penicillin and the atom – and you should choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

One of his books is “The E.D.M.A Code.” – A mystical book full of kabbalistic imagery written following LSD treatment that was given to him by the Dutch psychiatrist Jan Bastians, who specialized in the treatment of Holocaust survivors through trance therapy under the influence of drugs. The letters E.D.M.A. were written by Dinur at the beginning of each of his books. Until the day of his death he refused to explain its meaning, but said that these letters saved him from death in Auschwitz. Professor Schaintoch from the Department of Yiddish Language and Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (who used to talk a lot with Dinur) claims that these letters represent the initials of the prayer “Eloka D’Meir Aneni” (G-d of Rabbi Meir, Answer Me), which is considered to be a magical rescue prayer, referring to the Tana (mishnaic era rabbi) Rabbi Meir.

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