Ruth Klüger (1931–2020)

Ruth Klüger was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. Her parents were Alma (Hirschel) and Viktor Klüger. In 1938, following Nazi Germany's Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, six-year-old Ruth "suddenly became a disadvantaged child," she later wrote. She had to change schools frequently and finally stopped going altogether. Her father, a pediatrician and gynecologist, lost his license to practice medicine and was later sent to prison. In 1942, at age 10, Ruth was deported with her mother to the Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Her father fled to France, but was deported to the Baltics by the Nazis and murdered. Her half-brother Georg was deported to Riga, Latvia, where he was murdered. Ruth and Alma were sent to the death camp at Auschwitz, then to Christianstadt, a slave labor subcamp of Gross-Rosen. After escaping a death march in February 1945, Ruth and her mother joined the flow of refugees into Germany, where they stayed until being allowed to emigrate to the USA in 1947. Ruth studied English literature at Hunter College in New York City, got married after graduation, and had two sons. In the 1960s, she divorced and moved to California to earn M.A. and PhD degrees in German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She had a successful career in academe as a professor of German literature in Cleveland, Kansas, and Virginia, and at Princeton and UC Irvine. Prof. Klüger became a recognized authority on German literature, especially of the 18th and 19th centuries. Her published works included scholarly articles, essays, poetry, and literary criticism. In 1992, she published her autobiography, Weiter leben: Eine Jugend, about her life before, during, and after the Holocaust. It became an instant hit and earned her numerous international prizes. It also established her as an important public intellectual in Germany and Austria. The book was translated into several languages and adapted for the stage. In 2001, it was published in English as Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. In 2008, Prof. Klüger published Unterwegs verloren, Wien: Zsolnay (Lost on the Way), a sequel that provided further insights into her life in the USA and Europe.