Jean Améry: Holocaust Analysis

Jean Améry, a survivor of the Holocaust, paints a very complicated and contradicting picture concerning the “necessity and impossibility of being a Jew.” The impossibility comes from Améry’s faith, or lack thereof. He states, “If being a Jew implies having a cultural heritage or religious ties, then I was not one and can never become one” (Améry, p 83). He has not, is not, and never will, be a Jew because he does not believe in God or partake in Jewish traditions. Before Hitler’s ascent to power, Améry did the best he could to separate himself from his Jewish heritage, though he felt he had no choice when he was thrown into the Jewish identity. However, when the Nuremberg laws were enacted, Améry states, “It didn’t begin until 1935, when I was sitting over a newspaper in a Vienna coffeehouse and was studying the Nuremburg Laws, which had just been enacted across the border in Germany. I needed only to skim them and already I could perceive that they applied to me. Society, concretized in the National Socialist German state, which the world recognized absolutely as the …show more content…
Art Spiegelman offers us a uniquely depressing take on the Holocaust through post-memory, the passing down of memories and stories from one generation to another. Though Spiegelman never experienced the Holocaust firsthand, he is able to paint an accurate and emotional picture by re-living the experience through his father’s eyes. This is shown by Spiegelman wearing a mask; he has only second-hand experience, but by wearing this mask, he vicariously experiences the Holocaust through his father, his memories, and his emotions. The downside to this is that one can only comprehend so much of an experience without actually going through it, so Spiegelman struggles when his father has difficulty communicating his thoughts or even refusing to tell him of certain events that transpired