London: Frederick Muller Ltd.. 1956.
First edition, first impression. 196x126mm. pp. 240. Red cloth, spine lettered in gilt. Original illustrated dustjacket. Some creasing to edges of jacket and slight chipping to foot of spine but otherwise in excellent condition and internally near fine. House of Dolls ran to several printings in year of publication but this first impression, particularly in the dustjacket, is rare in commmerce.
Ka-Tsetnik 135633 is the pseudonym of Yehiel De-Nur who survived two years in Auschwitz. Ka-Tsetnik is Yiddish concentration camp slang for a prisoner and 135633 was his camp number. House of Dolls is a lightly fictionalised novel based on the diaries of a young girl taken from her school in Poland in 1939 and forced into a Nazi labour camp and then into a brothel (a Joy Division) established for German armed forces. It is a graphic, violent and disturbing novel and a key work in Holocaust literature and is sometimes regarded as the inspiration behind the short-lived and controversial "Stalag fiction" genre.
