Ischa Meijer
I Have Nothing Against Anti-Semites: I Feed Off of Them!
Dutch classic – full translation grant available
In his work, Ischa Meijer fought relentlessly and often with great humor against hypocrisy and untruthfulness. He also mercilessly rejected what he saw as the suffocating Jewish environment he came from – in this he is somewhat reminiscent of Philip Roth. His work is typified by its kaleidoscopic nature: he wrote poems, reportages, diaries, letters, theatre pieces, songs, columns and interviews. His childhood memories, in particular, are as tragic as they are striking: as the son of concentration camp survivors, he was the ‘little boy who was supposed to make everything right’. Letter to My Mother (1974) is his most famous work: a furious treatment of his ‘upbringing’ at the hands of parents traumatized by the war.