ABSTRACT
From the 1930s, Semprún’s life was lived in the headlights of European history. A bilingual and multicultural education combined with the experience of being exiled from Spain via Holland to France immersed him from an early age in the political challenges and cultural diversity of Europe. His experience as a deportee in Buchenwald, a place he has described as being at the heart of twentieth-century Europe’s two totalitarian ideologies, was fundamental to his thinking and vision for the continent. 1 This vision is expounded mainly in his political and philosophical essays concerning Europe’s history, its contemporary challenges and its future. 2 Consequently, in this final chapter I will examine how Semprún’s literary-philosophical project to communicate the essential truth of Buchenwald evolves into a vision of democratic socialism in Europe in the post-Holocaust and post-Stalinist era. Semprún’s analysis of Europe is a crucial area of his political thought which to date has not yet been fully acknowledged. Hence this chapter has an expositional function insofar as it will aim to articulate Semprún’s vision of Europe so that that its originality and value may be more widely understood.
