Kurze Inhaltsangabe
Kindheit einer Jüdin in Wien
Mit sieben Jahren durfte sie in ihrer Heimatstadt Wien auf keiner Parkbank mehr sitzen. Mit elf kam sie in KZ. Ruth Klüger erzählt ihre Kindheit und Jugend ( )

Wow! This is such a profound, sensitive and in-the-face testimony of the holocaust that all other personal testimonies of camp life seem to pale in its wake. ( )

Nata a Vienna nel 1931 e deportata ad Auschwitz, Ruth Klüger ha insegnato letteratura tedesca all'Università di Irvine (California) e collabora oggi alle pagine culturali dei principali quotidiani tedeschi. "Vivere ancora" ha ottenuto molteplici riconoscimenti tra cui il premio Grimmelshausen per la letteratura.

Uno sgurado inedito, quello di una bambina, che osserva il mondo del lager. ( )

Like no other Holocaust memoir I've read before. The difference being Kluger does not suffer fools. She relates her experiences growing up in Austria and in the concentration camps, and after the war very directly. At times reading Still Alive felt like Kluger was observing and reporting on what had occurred to other people not to her.

But her bluntness and distance serve to do the opposite; highlight her pain and loss. A significant part of this memoir describes difficult relationships with her father and especially with her mother. In the adult Kluger there still lingers a bewildered and hurt aura of a little girl who loved her parents but felt her emotions were misunderstood and usually unreturned. She felt she could never totally trust her mother which resulted in her lifelong distrust and scepticism of people.

Smart, opinionated and starkly honest she survived with G-d directing her mother and other prisoners to help her. (I doubt Kluger would appreciate my bringing G-d into this because she is philosophically more humanistic in her belief that people alone are responsible for their lives.) Life taught her to be strong, resilient, and to move forward with her plans even if it meant disappointing others.

At first I was surprised by Kluger's brash writing. Continuing to read I came to appreciate and recognize her unique brand of frankness. Many Holocaust memoirs I've read are often restrained or toned-down but Kluger was having none of that. I'm sure some readers would feel her writing is unkind, discourteous, and harsh by her "saying" that not all Jews, including some of her relatives, were especially good, kind and sweet even prior to life becoming difficult for Jews, and certainly not during the war and the Holocaust. As a matter of fact, Kluger admits to being stunned when she receives aid from other prisoners.

This is Kluger's life and she wrote it according to her experiences, reactions and personality.

A strong, exceptional reading experience. ( )