Jorge Semprun

On March 1, 1995, at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, ARTE (a French-German state-funded television network) proposed an encounter between two highly-regarded figures of our time: Elie Wiesel and Jorge Semprún. These two men, whose destinies were unparalleled, had probably crossed paths—without ever meeting—in the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in 1945. This short book is the entire transcription of their recorded conversation. During World War II, Buchenwald was the center of a major network of sub-camps and an important source of forced labor. Most of the internees were German political prisoners, but the camp also held a total of 10,000 Jews, Roma, Sinti, Jehovah's Witnesses, and German military deserters. In these pages, Wiesel and Semprún poignantly discuss the human condition under catastrophic circumstances. They review the categories of inmate at Buchenwald and agree on the tragic reason for the fate of the victims of Nazism—as well as why this fate was largely ignored for so long after the end of the war. Both men offer riveting testimony and pay vibrant homage to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Today, seventy-five years after the liberation of the Nazi camps, this book could not be more timely for its confrontation with ultra-nationalism and antisemitism.

Das Buch berichtet von der vier Tage und fünf Nächte dauernden Fahrt gefangener Widerstandskämpfer in einem überfüllten Viehwaggon. 120 Männer drängen sich in diesem Wagen, ohne Essen und Trinken, mit kaum ausreichender Luftversorgung. Die Fahrt in einem schneidend kalten Winter geht von Compi?gne in das Konzentrationslager Buchenwald. Im Lauf des Buchs wird der Autor anmerken, dass die Deutschen in die gleichen Waggons 200 Juden pferchten. Der Bericht endet mit dem Erreichen des Lagers. Der Autor ist 20, als er diese Reise antreten muss; Sempr?ns engster Gefährte während der >>Reise>Junge aus Semur

Jorge Semprun was twenty years old - already an accomplished philosopher and poet - when arrested by Nazis for activites in the French Resistance. He was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Literature or Life, a bestseller in France, is a deeply personal account not only of Semprun's time at Buchenwald, but also of the years before and after, of his painful attempts to write this book...created out of obsessions that returned him again and again like themes in a nightmarish rhapsody.His long reverie on life-as-death, now translated with the mesmerizing power of fiction. It is a profound contribution to Holocaust literature. ? Semprun was awarded the Jerusalem prize at the 1997 Jerusalem International Book Fair. ? Semprun's first novel, The Long Voyage, won Europe's prestigious Formentor Prize.

Schreiben oder Leben: Nach seiner Befreiung aus dem KZ hatte sich Jorge Semprun für eine lange 'Kur der bewußten Aphasie' entschieden, um weiterleben zu können. Dann aber hat er sich der grundlegenden Erfahrung seines Lebens, der Erinnerung an Buchenwald, gestellt und zu sprechen begonnen. Nach 'Die große Reise' schreibt er hier seine deutsche Geschichte fort, schildert die unmittelbaren Stunden und Tage der Befreiung Buchenwalds durch alliierte Truppen im März 1945. (Stiftung Lesen).