On the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew

Born into a middle-class family in Vienna as Hans Mayer (the letters of his last name were later rearranged into Améry), Jean Améry published political and literary essays. In 1939, he escaped to Belgium and joined the Resistance. Arrested by the Gestapo for his anti-Nazi activities, Améry was tortured and then, after his Jewish lineage was discovered, interned at several concentration camps. Although he wrote comparatively little on his life during the Holocaust, his best-known work focuses on his experiences as a survivor. His deeply meditative essays and novels have been compared to the works of Primo Levi. Améry committed suicide in 1978.