“Even when you talk about something else, I talk about Auschwitz, I am a medium of the spirit of Auschwitz, Auschwitz speaks through me,” wrote Imre Kertesz Journal of the galley . The Hungarian writer, awarded in 2002 the Nobel Prize for Literature, a teenager survived the Nazi death camp. He died today at age 86 at his home in Budapest.
Kertész was born on November 9, 1929 in a Jewish family in Budapest. In 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz and then to Buchenwald, where he was released by US troops in May 1945.
In the following decades he worked as a journalist, author of theater comedies and translator of authors such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. But could not break free of the memories of the Nazi concentration camps and between 1960 and 1973 worked tirelessly in his seminal work, Fateless .
The book describes the passage of a 15 year old through the concentration camps. This is a disturbing prose that seeks consternation, but, as a vivisección- visible trauma of the protagonist, György Köves. This comes to internalize both the “order” field even get to experience “happiness”.
When he wrote Fateless was set mainly in language, said Kertész in 2015 an interview with dpa. “How can you exterminate more than six million Jews no more? Which language can express that? (…) For what purpose is used -under the conditions of dictatorships totalitarias- language, what used to be human? “.
so it was logical that the protagonist of the novel were a child. Not to excite the public, but “because in totalitarian dictatorships joint language of men falls to the level of a child . So for the protagonist, György Köves, of course all that is unnatural “.
Fateless followed Fiasco , Kaddish for the unborn child and Sale related to his masterpiece. And although the narrative prose of Kertész returned again and again to Auschwitz, the result is far from a monotonous literature dismay.
Journal of the galley , which includes notes between 1961 and 1963, the writer keeps track of issues such as freedom of the individual under communist rule. The author survived the Holocaust as a teenager. But, as is often recognized only after the totalitarian experience of communism who lived adult could penetrate analytically in the Holocaust and make it the subject of his stories.
The subject of the Holocaust was linked to many taboos under the Hungarian communist government, such as the question of the Hitler-Stalin pact and the latent anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.
the Hungarian company itself refused to review the past, which had registered the 600,000 deportation of Jews to concentration camps by order of the local authorities allied with the Nazis Hungarians. In the communist era was not held an open discussion about the past.
After the transition to democracy in 1989, Kertész continued to have a complicated relationship with his native country. He was worried about the growing nationalism and anti-Semitism. Continued avoiding a critical analysis of the past related to the Holocaust and repression became a reason of state especially under right-wing governments.
When in 2002 Kertész became the first Hungarian to receive Premino Nobel Literature, the public media were dismissive. Many people right was considered a traitor for his criticism of the situation in Hungary.
The money received by the Nobel allowed to settle in Berlin. But the labels that will inevitably classified following the granting of the award affected him deeply. “I became a limited liability company into a brand. In Kertész brand”, he said in an interview with the German weekly “Die Zeit”.
Since 2000 suffered from Parkinson’s disease and late 2012 moved from Berlin to Budapest and which, he acknowledged, could continue to be paid the expensive treatments in Germany. Apparently, in private he made peace with his native Hungary, ruled since 2010 by the right-wing conservative Viktor Orban.
In 2014 he received the Order of St. Stephen, a decoration dating from the era of dictator Miklós Horthy, responsible for Kertész and other Hungarian Jews were deported to Auschwitz, and that Orban recovered in 2012 as the highest recognition of the state.
many admirers of the writer’s disappointed that it lent itself to justify that decision Orban, whom they consider undemocratic and accused of minimizing the Holocaust. But others backed him precisely because Kertész considered defender of personal autonomy, that issue had also acted independently.
Gregor Mayer / DPA
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