The smoke from the crematorium, the smell of charred bodies, the “harsh and irritated” voice of the Sturmführer that sounded through the camp loudspeakers, the beatings of the SS, the lice, the fights for a piece of bread, the slaughter of a group of Jewish children arriving from Auschwitz, the presence of absolute evil... Buchenwald always accompanied Jorge Semprún. The Holocaust was present in his daily life, in his nightly nightmares, in his literature, in his thoughts and in his cinema.
How did an upper-class Spanish boy, grandson of former president Antonio Maura and son of a prestigious jurist, end up in a Nazi camp? Jorge Semprún's family went into exile after the outbreak of the Civil War. Once the conflict was over, young Jorge settled in Paris, finished high school and enrolled at the Sorbonne to study Philosophy.
He did not take long to join the Resistance, according to Mayka Lahoz, editor of Destino y memoria (Tusquets), a book that reviews the life and work of Semprún to commemorate the centenary of his birth and which also has the collaboration of Jordi Amat. , Benito Bermejo, Reyes Mate or Anna Caballé among others.
“In 1943, after being betrayed, Semprún was detained and tortured by the Gestapo and later deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp.” He arrived on January 29, 1944. He had just turned 21 years old. He became prisoner 44,904. “Curiosity, as well as good health and, above all, knowledge of the German language, helped Semprún stay alive. The luck factor did the rest,” says Lahoz.
Semprún himself recalled one of those episodes of destiny in I will live with his name, he will die with mine (Tusquets, 2001). One day a letter arrived in Buchenwald asking about Semprún. Another of the captives read it, although not complete, and warned him. That requirement could mean immediate death or transfer to another field. The inmates devised a plan to save the writer: look for another already dying prisoner (what they called a Muslim in the camp) and exchange his identity with that of Semprún.
In the end, it wasn't necessary to make the change, but that was the first time Semprún was on the verge of becoming someone else. There would be many more. Because once released, the writer joined the Communist Party with the mission of returning to Spain to restructure communism in the country's intellectual circles. He returned with false names: Jacques Grador, Federico Artigas, Rafael Bustamente, Agustín Larrea and, above all, Federico Sánchez.
For 10 years, the false Sánchez risked his neck for the party, but little by little he distanced himself. His defense of pluralism and democracy irritated Santiago Carrillo who expelled him from the organization. And he was cathartic. Semprún became a writer and through his words began a process, perhaps never completed, of atonement for that Nazi camp that marked his life. The Long Journey (1962), the chronicle of his deportation, marked the beginning of Semprún's successful literary career.
It was also the embryo of his activity as a film scriptwriter. “In the country house of the Montands - Yves and Simone - there was a guest, Georges, always shrouded in mystery. One day, Simone (Signoret) handed me a book, Le Grand Voyage, telling me: “It's by Georges.” He admired the quality of his writing,” recalls Costa-Gavras in his collaboration for Destino y memoria.
The filmmaker and the writer joined forces in such famous films as Z (1969) or The Confession (1970), although Semprún also wrote the scripts for The War is Over (Alain Resnais, 1966), The Southern Routes (Joseph Losey, 1978 ) or the television series The Disasters of War (Mario Camus, 1983).
At Franco's death, Semprún was a famous intellectual in France, where he had met Felipe González. The former Spanish president also remembers it in Destino y memoria: “We met for the first time when he broke with the communist party after Carrillo's expulsion. When I appointed him minister I had to recover his nationality and in that process that relationship, which was already very intense, became very close.”
Semprún was Minister of Culture in the González Government between 1988 and 1991. At that stage he promoted the cinema law and managed the inheritance of Salvador Dalí. But, despite González's affection, he was dismissed. In an interview with Mercedes Milà, he “was clearly positioned regarding the responsibility of Juan Guerra, brother of Vice President Alfonso Guerra, in a dark matter of illicit personal enrichment. For the guerristas, Semprún had betrayed the left.”
