Ruth Klüger (Austria, 1931), Holocaust survivor
Ruth Klüger (F / Austria, 1931), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS: <Austria> <Theresienstadt> <Auschwitz> <Gross-Rosen>
- MEMOIRS : Still Alive (1992)
Biography
Ruth Klüger was born October 30, 1931 in Vienna, Austria. After the Nazi annexation of Austria, she was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp together with her mother at the age of 11; her father had tried to flee abroad, but was detained and killed. One year later she was transferred to Auschwitz, then to Christianstadt, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen. Following the end of World War II in 1945 she settled in the Bavarian town of Straubing and later studied philosophy and history at the Philosophisch-theologische Hochschule in Regensburg.
In 1947 she emigrated to the United States and studied English literature in New York and German literature at Berkeley. She worked as a college professor of German literature in Cleveland, Ohio, Kansas, and Virginia, and at Princeton and UC Irvine.
Book : Still Alive (1992)
- Weiter Leben: eine Jugend <German> (1992) is a memoir written by Holocaust survivor Ruth Klüger (b.1931). English trans. Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (New York, NY: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2001)
"Swept up as a child in the events of Nazi-era Europe, Kluger saw her family's comfortable Vienna existence destroyed. Despite her shattered childhood, Kluger eventually reclaimed her life. A coming-of-age story that delves into the unsentimental observations of childhood, "Still Alive" rejects easy assumptions about history as Kluger relates how she and her family survived the Holocaust."--Publisher description.