"Ruth Klüger (1931 – 2020) passed away on October 5, 2020 in the U.S. Born in Vienna and deported to Theresienstadt, she survived Auschwitz and the Shoah together with her mother. After living in Germany for a short time after the War, she immigrated to New York. She was educated in the U.S. and received degrees in English literature as well as her Ph.D. in German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at several American universities. She has numerous scholarly publications to her credit, mostly in the fields of German and Austrian literary history. She is also recognized as a poet in...
"The author's starting point is the interweaving of forgiveness and resentment in the works of Jewish writers after the Holocaust, most especially Hannah Arendt and Jean Améry, to make sense of the catastrophe and to point to a way forward for both victims and perpetrators. The insights of these two writers and of several Jewish novelists and poets, including Bruno Schulz, Paul Celan, and Aharon Appelfeld, are used to develop accounts of forgiveness and resentment in other cases of mass atrocity around the world. The author offers a critical rereading of primary sources that aim to separate resentment from...
"This book elaborates Jean Améry’s critique of philosophy and his discussion of some central philosophical themes in At the Mind’s Limits and his other writings. It shows how Améry elaborates the shortcomings and unfitness of philosophical theories to account for torture, the experience of homelessness, and other indignities, and their inability to assist with overcoming resentment. It thus teases out the philosophical import of Jean Améry's critique of philosophy, which constitutes his own philosophical testament of being an inmate at Auschwitz. This book situates At the Mind’s Limits in the context of...
Primo Levi und Jean Améry haben beide die Hölle von Auschwitz durchlebt. Aus ihren Erfahrungen aber haben sie unterschiedliche Schlüsse gezogen. Während der italienische Jude Levi durch sein Zeugnis Erleichterung verspürt, wird der zum Juden gemachte Österreicher Améry in der Welt nicht mehr heimisch. Der Band erzählt vom Leben und Denken der beiden gegensätzlichen Persönlichkeiten, deren Schicksale gleichzeitig so viel verband – vom antifaschistischen Widerstand über die entmenschlichenden Erfahrungen im Konzentrationslager bis hin zum Versuch literarischer Bewältigung.