Yochai Ataria - Jean Améry: Beyond the Minds Limits

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Jean Amry was born Hans Mayer in Vienna, in 1912, the son of a middle-class Austrian mother and an assimilated Jewish father. In 1935, when Nazi Germany instituted anti-Semitic racial Laws, Amry was studying philosophy and literature at Vienna University. Following Germanys annexation of Austria (Anschluss) in 1938, he escaped the Nazi regime. He initially fled to France and later to Belgium, where he joined a German-speaking unit of the resistance. In July 1943, Amry was arrested by the Gestapo for spreading anti-Nazi propaganda among the German occupying forces in Belgium. Imprisoned in Fort Breendonk, Amry was tortured and interrogated by the SS for several days. Upon realizing that he was Jewish, not merely a political prisoner, his captors sent him to Auschwitz. Amry endured a year in Auschwitz III, the Buna-Monowitz labor camp. Lacking manual skills, he was assigned to a labor detail at the I-G Farben site, digging dirt, laying cables, lugging sacks of cement and iron crossbeams. As the Red Army advanced, Amry was evacuated first to Buchenwald and subsequently to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated in April 1945. Amry did not speakpubliclyabout the Holocaust for almost twenty years. He finally broke his silence in October 1964, in a series of radio programs in Germany. These programs subsequently formed the basis for his well-known collection of essays,Jenseits von Schuld und Shne(1966). An English translation, entitledAt the Minds Limits, was published in 1980. On October 17, 1978, Amry committed suicide.

Amrys decision to break his silence and broadcast his first radio program about the Holocaust should be understood on the background of the Auschwitz trials (that began in December 1963), the publication of Primo Levis bookIf This Is a Manin Germany (1961), and Arendts contemplations of the Eichmann trial (1963). Amrys views and style offered a unique, challenging, and straightforward perspective on Auschwitz from within. Throughout the years, interest in Amry has grown continuously. Today, it seems that the essays he published based on his radio programs were not only timely but also timeless.

This volume explores various major aspects of Amrys work. While reading AmryquaHolocaust survivor is unavoidable, such overgeneralizations may obscure the uniqueness of Amrys voice. In light of this, the essays in this volume collectively contribute to a subtler, more comprehensive picture of Amrys thought and a better understanding of his multifaceted personality.

The volume is divided into three parts. The first, entitled Limits: Bound to the Past, concentrates on what appears to be Amrys insistence on facing backwards, not allowing the past slip away. The essays in this part explore various aspects of this stance, according to which the world continued to move forward while Amrys personal clock remained frozen in time. The second part, The Mind: Torture and Consequences, focuses on the nature of torture, the ramifications of this experience, and the relevant normative implications. The third part, Beyond: Philosophy and Literature, progresses beyond the discourse of victimization and trauma, examining less well-known aspects of Amrys work, with special attention to his literary work and philosophical views.

The first part begins with a chapter byBerel Lang. Lang compares Amry to a fellow inmate, a man who was imprisoned in the same block as Amry and is considered one of the most important authors to have written about Auschwitz: Primo Levi. Indeed, there are numerous parallels between the lives (and deaths) of Jean Amry and Primo Levi. This essay underscores the differences between the two writers understanding of their wartime experiences and their reactions to that past in the post-Holocaust reality.

In the second chapter,Amit Kravitzexplores the issue of testimony, revealing different aspects of Amrys intricate philosophical approach toward it. In particular, Kravitz examines Amrys approach to testimony in light of three philosophical challenges: (a) testimony and the question of historical objectivity; (b) testimony and the reality of evil; and (c) the tension between testimony and the concept of moral kitsch. In addition, this chapter considers the ramifications of the so-called universalization of the Holocaust on testimony.

Subsequently,Fred Alforddiscusses forgiveness in the intergenerational context. According to Alford Amry regarded forgiveness as a virtue only under impossible conditions: when both perpetrator and victim wish with equal intensity that the offense had never occurred; that time could be reset, ensuring a different outcome. However, Amrys approach encounters a further problem: it can apply only to the Holocaust generation. Subsequent generations, on both sides, can no longer wish for the reversal of time, because they are outside of the original time frame.

Magdalena Zolkosoffers a comparative analysis of Amrys essay How Much Home Does a Person Need? In this essay, Amry argued that the homesickness experienced by assimilated German-speaking Jews during the war was a very specific kind of longing. This chapter, however, goes a step further, examining Amrys notions in the context of Behrouz Boochanis writingsthe political memoir of a refugee imprisoned in the Australian detention center on Manus Island. In so doing, it reveals the central role played by the motif of freedom as a means of resisting oppression.In the final chapter of the first part,