Whatever Happened to Jack Hamesh?

A new literary mystery has emerged with the publication by Suhrkamp Verlag in Germany of 11 love letters, dated 1946-47, by Jack Hamesh, a young Viennese Jewish émigré, to the noted Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann, who was then 18.
Hamesh, born c. 1920, had fled Vienna in 1938 on one of the Kindertransport to England, but returned briefly as a member of the postwar British army, interviewing local girls, including Ingeborg, about their involvement in the Bund Deutscher Mädel, or German Girls’ League. His discussion with Ingeborg soon turned to writers officially banned during the Nazi era, including those of Jewish origin such as Stefan Zweig, Arthur Schnitzler, and Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
Bachmann was by nature a philosemite (her moving correspondence with Paul Celan was published by Suhrkamp in 2008). Soon Hamesh was kissing her hand, and Bachmann was vowing never to wash that hand again.
In the summer of 1946 Hamesh left Austria for Palestine. Still emotionally involved with Ingeborg, he wrote her ardent letters in somewhat crabbed German from Tel Aviv, first from a return address on HaRakevet Street, a hectic industrial area, and later from Nagara Street, near Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market and the old (now closed) Allenby Cinema.
Signing his letters Jakob, Jäcki, Jak, and Jaky, Hamesh at first expressed “disorientation” after making Aliyah, but by his last surviving letter, dated July 16, 1947, he expresses a measure of contentment. By then he had worked at diverse jobs, from leather factory employee to field hand to waiter. He keeps in mind, as he tells Ingeborg: “I might easily be rotting in a mass grave in Poland or Germany or even in my OLD HOMELAND Austria.” Hamesh adds: “The young people growing up here are strong and good-looking, proud and straightforward, simple and free from all the persecution and inferiority complexes that characterize young Jews in Europe.”
In 2008, David Constantine, the eminent British writer and translator of German, published translations of two Hamesh letters in his journal Modern Poetry in Translation. Since then, however, no further trace of Hamesh has been found. Hans Höller, editor of the new Suhrkamp volume, worked with the Douglas E. Goldman Jewish Genealogy Center at Beth Hatefutsoth, among others, but to no avail.
Perhaps one day more may be discovered about why Hamesh stopped writing, and how his life developed, “free from all the persecution.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.