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Memoir Ruth Kluger. Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. New York. Feminist Press at the City University of New York. 2001.214 pages. $24.95. ISBN 1-55861-271-8
STILL ALIVE, its author informs us, is "neither a translation [of her autobiography] nor a new book; it is another version, a parallel book." The publication, in 1992, of her belated Holocaust testimonial, Weiter leben: Eine Jugend, by an Austrian Jewish survivor of Hitler's death camps catapulted Ruth Kluger to international fame. Translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Czech, and Japanese, Weiter leben transformed a respected American professor and critic of German literature into a universally acclaimed writer whose work has been favorably compared to that of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi; it also garnered her numerous literary prizes throughout Europe. Widely admired for her utter lack of sentimentality and unflinching honesty, Kluger has also come under fire for her highly critical portrayal of her mother and the uncompromisingly candid depiction of their fractious relationship.
Ironically, the nine-year delay in the publication of the English version of her autobiography reflects Kluger's attempts to protect her mother from her own relentless honesty; she withheld its release until after her mother's death at the age of ninety-seven. Unlike its German counterpart, Still Alive was written for an American audience, specifically for Kluger's children and her American students. This shift in intended readership brings with it a shift in focus and emphasis. What distinguishes Weiter leben from most Holocaust testimonials by Jewish survivor emigres to the United States is that it was not only written in Germany, in German, but also dedicated to Kluger's German friends in Got tingen and intended...