Presented by The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation
Symposia in Jewish Studies
Wednesday, November 20 / 5 P.M. / Free
UCSB Campbell Hall

Ruth Kluger presents a reading from her international, best-selling and award-winning memoir, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (2001). Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of Still Alive will be available for purchase and signing at this event.

"A deeply moving and significant work that raises vital questions about cultural representations of the Holocaust..." -- Publishers Weekly

"Deftly combining her own compelling narrative with a rigorous commentary...adds a spirited and original voice to...Holocaust literature." -- Library Journal

"A stunning autobiography, charting the blurred borders of a child, a daughter, a woman, ...a scholar, and a Jew." -- Booklist

"An unforgettable example of humanity." -- Le Monde

"A work of such nuance, intelligence, and force that it leaps the bounds of genre." -- Kirkus Reviews

Book Description

Swept up as a child in the events of Nazi-era Europe, Ruth Kluger saw her family's comfortable Vienna existence systematically undermined and destroyed. By age 11, she had been deported, along with her mother, to Theresienstadt, the first in a series of concentration camps which would become the setting for her precarious childhood. Kluger's story of her years in the camps and her struggle to establish a viable life after the war has emerged as one of the most powerful accounts of the Holocaust.

A coming-of-age story that constantly delves into the blunt, unsentimental observations of childhood, Still Alive rejects all easy assumptions about history, both political and personal. Whether describing the abuse she met at her own mother's hand, the life-saving generosity of a woman SS aide in Auschwitz, the foibles and prejudices of Allied liberators, or the cold shoulder offered by her relatives when she and her mother arrived as refugees in New York, Kluger sees and names an unexpected reality which has little to do with conventional wisdom or morality tales. From the experiences of her youth she builds a philosophical argument for the right to live and the right to self-determination.

About the Author

Ruth Kluger is professor emeritus of German literature at UC-Irvine. She graduated from Hunter College in 1950 and received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. She distinguished herself through scholarly writings on Kleist, Lessing, Stifter, and Grillparzer. Kluger was chair of the German department at Princeton University in the mid-1980s and has served on the executive council of the MLA. Still Alive has won eight distinguished awards.

This event is part of the Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It is cosponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Hillel, and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.

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