The Life Philosophies of Three Camp Survivors: Jean Améry, Charlotte Delbo, Imre Kertész

The reality of Auschwitz, it might be thought, was enough to turn all European writers into nihilists, inciting them to commit suicide or at least to lay down their pens in despair (Theodor Adorno famously said that after Auschwitz it was no longer possible to write poetry). Yet this is not what happened. Huston discusses the life philosophies of three camp survivors: Jean Amery, Charlotte Delbo, Imre Kertesz. Even those who were themselves at Auschwitz did not all draw the same conclusions from their experience of hell; some of them emerged from the camps as professors of despair; others did not; and the differences among them cast an interesting light on the nihilistic credo which was to earn its lettres de noblesse after the war.