Ruth Klüger – Austrian Survivor of the Holocaust
Ruth Klüger (born 30 October 1931) is Professor Emeritus of German at the University of California, Irvine[1] and a Holocaust survivor. She is also the author of the bestseller weiter leben: Eine Jugend about her childhood in the Third Reich.[2]
When she was only six years old, Hitler marched into Vienna, the annexation of Austria to the Third Reich deeply affected Ruth’s life. Ruth had to change schools frequently and grew up in an increasingly hostile and anti-Semitic environment. Her father, who was a Jewish gynecologist, lost his practitioner’s license and was later sent to prison for performing an illegal abortion.[3]
Ruth Klüger’s Book, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
After the Nazi annexation of Austria, at the age of 11, Ruth was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp together with her mother; one year later she was transferred to Auschwitz, then to Christianstadt, a sub camp of Gross-Rosen. Her father tried to flee abroad, but was detained and killed. 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.
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Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. New York: 2001; Weiter leben. Eine Jugend. Göttingen: 1992.
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