Cold Days by Tibor Cseres
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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During the Second World War, there was a massacre conducted by the Hungarian military in the Yugoslavian town now called Novi Sad (known as Újvidék under the Hungarians.) The operation was meant to be a cleanup of Yugoslavian partisans, but the casualties were primarily innocent civilians. The novel is called “Cold Days” (i.e. literally translated from the Hungarian “Hideg Napok”) because the killings took place during a cold snap in January of 1942. Cseres bases his novel on this real world event, but he tells the story through the lens of four fictional military men who are sharing a cell for their respective actions in Novi Sad.

The novel weaves five narrative lines into an overall arc. Four of these are the personal stories of each of the four soldiers during the massacre and the time leading up to it, and the fifth takes place later when they are all together in the cell. The four characters have no connection before being placed in the same cell—or so it seems. At most, the officers know of each other. The five lines come together in the end and the reader sees how the four lives are no longer in strict isolation, but are connected by the events of that day—in some cases more severely than others.

Captain Büky is the highest ranking of the prisoners and is a straight-laced military man except that he takes issue with the order than keeps married men from bringing their families to station at Novi Sad. Prior to the massacre and some killings that instigated it, it’d been a routine assignment. Lieutenant Tarpataki is a new assignee, and his principal trouble is that he arrives to find that he hasn’t been assigned housing or a billet. Lieutenant Pozdor gets his men taken from his control by the police chain of command and is left hiding out trying to avoid being assigned some remedial task. Corporal Szabo is both the only enlisted man in the group and the only one who is directly involved with the violence, though a Cpl. Dorner takes the lead and Szabo is a follower.

If that cast doesn’t seem like the kind of villainous blackguards one expects of a massacre crew, I think that that is part of what the author is trying to convey. Run-of-the-mill men stumble down slippery slopes into treachery during times of war. Sometimes the worst go unpunished, while others take the fall. The author also shows that sides can matter little when it comes to such events. Anyone can suffer loss when events tumble out of control as they did in January of 1942 on frigid day in Novi Sad.

This book is translated from Hungarian. It’s sparse and simple writing, and readability is high. It’s a short book of only about 120 pages.

I’d recommend this book for those interested in tales of the horrors of war. It may have interest to history as well as fiction readers.

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