Ruth Kluger (1) : Ruth Klüger

Ruth Klüger, born to an Austrian-Jewish family, was only six years old when the Nazis marched into her native city of Vienna. The Anschluss (annexation of Austria) changed the course of her comfortable childhood. She grew up in an increasingly anti-Semitic environment and was forced to change schools frequently. Her father, a physician, lost his license to practice medicine and was sent to prison. At age 11, Ruth was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp together with her mother. Her father tried to flee the country but was detained and executed. In 1943, Ruth was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, then to Christianstadt, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen. After the end of World War II, Ruth Klüger 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 USA and studied English literature in New York and German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught German literature at various universities in Cleveland, Ohio, Kansas, and Virginia, and at Princeton and UC Irvine, where she was named professor of German (now professor emeritus). Ruth Klüger became a recognized authority on 19th-century German literature, especially Lessing and Kleist, and wrote several scholarly works. She began working on her memoirs when she returned to Germany in 1988 with the University of California's Education Abroad Program. Entitled Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, it was published in 2001 and is a bestseller in many languages.