Two key works on the concentration camp universe have been reissued. First, Maria Foldes, born in 1925 and died in 1976, was a major figure in Romanian-Hungarian literature. Born in Romania, she suffered under the anti-Semitic laws following the annexation of Transylvania by Admiral Horthy's fascist Hungary. She was nevertheless able to continue her studies until her deportation by the Nazis in 1944. Upon her return from the camps, she devoted herself to literature and writing plays that express the suffering of deportation. "The Walk" is one of her most accomplished expressions of the difficulty of survival. In it, Maria Foldes evokes her daily life in post-war communist Romania, a somber and bleak country marked by the drabness of everyday life. A queue in a shop brings back memories of roll calls in the camp. A coin evokes survival in the ghetto. Music evokes memories of the invasion. A testimony that seems to explain why one never truly leaves the camps.
Hans Chaïm Mayer, who wrote under the pen name Jean Amery, also published several major works on the concentration camp system and the memory of the atrocities. Born in Vienna in 1912, he settled in Belgium after the Anschluss in 1938. In 1940, he joined the resistance and was arrested and deported in 1943. Upon his return, he published several major works, such as *The Shipwrecked* and *Lefeu or the Demolition*, which has just been reissued. The protagonist is a painter. His building is slated for demolition. Lefeu refuses his eviction as a further act of resistance. But he is plunged back into the torments of the past, while simultaneously rejecting his fate, resorting to literature and wandering to defend himself.
Like Primo Levi, both took their own lives, and despite their newfound freedom, they seem to have remained prisoners of the concentration camp universe.
* Fire or Demolition
Jean Amery
Les Belles Lettres 2026 206 pp. EUR15.50
* The Walk
Maria Földes
Éditions des Syrtes 2026 148 pp. EUR17
https://monde-libertaire.net/?articlen=8920
_________________________________________
Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten