Jean Améry – författare

I Gläntas nya nummer samtalar den palestinska författaren Adania Shibli med Balsam Karam & Elisabeth Hjorth & Hanna Nordenhök. Tre samtal som har blivit en enda text. Här finns också konstkollektivet HAWAF som till Glänta producerat en specialversion av deras museum för Gaza, Sahab Museum, som går att vika ut ur numret. Dessutom ett kapitel ur Gloria Anzaldúas klassiska verk Borderlands / La Frontera, samt förintelseöverlevaren Jean Amérys text om självmordet. Samt dikter av Doaa Kamel, Sofia Junes, Leif Holmstrand och UKON. Och den tyska medieteoretikern Bernhard Siegerts genomgång av dörrar, och deras materiella och symboliska betydelser.

In April 1945, Jean Améry was liberated from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. A Jewish and political prisoner, he had been brutally tortured by the Nazis, and had also survived both Auschwitz and other infamous camps. His experiences during the Holocaust were made famous by his book At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz and Its Realities.Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left features a collection of essays by Améry translated into English for the first time. Although written between 1966 and 1978, Améry's insights remain fresh and contemporary, and showcase the power of his thought.Originally written when leftwing antisemitism was first on the rise, Améry's searing prose interrogates the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism and challenges the international left to confront its failure to think critically and reflectively.

In April 1945, Jean Améry was liberated from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. A Jewish and political prisoner, he had been brutally tortured by the Nazis, and had also survived both Auschwitz and other infamous camps. His experiences during the Holocaust were made famous by his book At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor of Auschwitz and Its Realities.Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left features a collection of essays by Améry translated into English for the first time. Although written between 1966 and 1978, Améry's insights remain fresh and contemporary, and showcase the power of his thought.Originally written when leftwing antisemitism was first on the rise, Améry's searing prose interrogates the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism and challenges the international left to confront its failure to think critically and reflectively.

"These are pages that one reads with almost physical pain. . .all the way to its stoic conclusion." —Primo Levi"The testimony of a profoundly serious man. . . . In its every turn and crease, it bears the marks of the true." —Irving Howe, New Republic"This remarkable memoir. . .is the autobiography of an extraordinarily acute conscience. With the ear of a poet and the eye of a novelist, Amery vividly communicates the wonder of a philosopher—a wonder here aroused by the 'dark riddle' of the Nazi regime and its systematic sadism." —Jim Miller, Newsweek"Whoever has succumbed to torture can no longer feel at home in the world. The shame of destruction cannot be erased. Trust in the world, which already collapsed in part at the first blow, but in the end, under torture, fully, will not be regained. That one's fellow man was experienced as the antiman remains in the tortured person as accumulated horror. It blocks the view into a world in which the principle of hope rules. One who was martyred is a defenseless prisoner of fear. It is fear that henceforth reigns over him." —Jean AmeryAt the Mind's Limits is the story of one man's incredible struggle to understand the reality of horror. In five autobiographical essays, Amery describes his survival—mental, moral, and physical—through the enormity of the Holocaust. Above all, this masterful record of introspection tells of a young Viennese intellectual's fervent vision of human nature and the betrayal of that vision.

" . . . a moving, deep series of insights into the suicide's world . . . " —Kirkus ReviewsJean Améry (Auschwitz survivor and author of At the Mind's Limits) thought of On Suicide as a continuation of the kind of reflections on mortality he had laid down in On Aging. But here he probes further and more deeply into the meaning of death and into the human capacity for suicide or voluntary death.

»Das sowohl politische wie jüdische Opfer, das ich war und bin, kann nicht schweigen, wenn unter dem Banner des Anti-Zionismus der alte miserable Antisemitismus sich wieder hervorwagt.« Jean Améry»Ein Klassiker der Zukunft«  Jürg Altwegg, FAZ»Man soll und darf die Vergangenheit nicht auf sich beruhen lassen, weil sie sonst auferstehen und zu neuer Gegenwärtigkeit werden könnte.« Jean AméryJean Amérys Essays, die zwischen 1969 und 1976 geschrieben wurden, erschrecken geradezu durch ihre Aktualität. Sie lesen sich in ihrer Prägnanz, als wären sie für den heutigen Tag geschrieben. Ausgehend von seinem Judesein, das ihm von den Nürnberger Gesetzen aufgezwungen wurde, beschreibt Jean Améry seine existentielle Bindung an Israel, seine Solidarität ist jedoch nicht bedingungslos. Und doch ist für ihn Israel das Land, das allen entrechteten Juden der Welt den aufrechten Gang gelehrt hat. Hier spricht sein Schmerz, weil er, von jeher ein Linker, die Neue Linke, die Israel als kolonialistisch betrachtet, nicht mehr erreichen kann: Ihr selbstgerechter Antizionismus steht ihm als unausrottbarer Antisemitismus klar vor Augen.