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Jorge Semprún : writing in tension
Marta Marín-Dòmine Writer
On 10 December 2023 , Jorge Semprún Maura would have turned one hundred years old . Commemorating a life means considering the different times in which it has been led , both personal and family-related , in addition to a strictly historical timeline . To begin , then : Jorge Semprún Maura was born in Madrid , into a wealthy family formed by the couple of Susana Maura , daughter of Antonio Maura , who served as president of the government several times during the reign of Alfonso XIII , and José María Semprún , a diplomat . Susana Maura died in 1932 and José María Semprún married Annette Litschi , the German governess of their seven children . The coup d ’ état in July 1936 took them by surprise while they were on holidays in the Basque Country . The family then embarked on a journey that would take them to France , Switzerland and the Netherlands . When the war had ended , they settled in Paris , where Jorge Semprún studied philosophy at the Sorbonne .
In 1941 , young Semprún joined the Resistance and in 1942 he joined the Spanish Communist Party , which operated between France and Spain . Nevertheless , he continued to do clandestine work in the Jean-Marie Action network . In September 1943 , Semprún was arrested by the Gestapo in Joigny , in Burgundy , and sent to the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp as a French political deportee , where he remained in contact with the camp ’ s clandestine communist organisation .
After the camps were liberated in 1945 , Jorge Semprún moved back to Paris . The return to everyday life was difficult for him , like so many other survivors . He would record this in his written work , especially the difficulty of writing about his experience in the concentration camp . Starting in the 1950s , his activity in the Spanish Communist Party became intense and risky for the next two decades because it was clandestine , as he was forced to cross
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Observing Memories Issue 7