Ruth Kluger, professor emerita of German, addresses Germany's Bundestag as part of Holocaust memorial
Office of the Dean
February 9, 2016
Kluger is best known for her award-winning autobiography, weiter leben. Eine Jugend (1992), which she translated into English as Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (2001).
On January 27, 2016, UCI Professor emerita of German, Ruth Kluger, addressed the German Parliament as the principal speaker for their version of Holocaust Remembrance Day (Gedenkstunde der Opfer des Nationalsozialismus).
She spoke on forced labor during the Nazi regime and concluded with an appreciation of Germany’s welcoming of Syrian and other refugees, using Merkel’s slogan: Wir schaffen das.
In her speech, she recalls a chance encounter that saved her life, but also forced her into labor:
“When we hear the words 'forced laborer,' we think of grown men and not half-starved little girls, but far from being an object of pity, I was a very lucky girl and I was proud of that. During the selection at Auschwitz–Birkenau extermination camp in the summer of 1944, when the gas chambers and the crematorium were working at full capacity, I had then managed to pass myself off as fit for duty in a work-unit of women aged between 15 and 45. I was waiting in line and as the SS officer asked my age—I was 12 at the time—I told him I was 15. In fact, I was scarcely credible, for after almost two nears in Theresienstadt, I was malnourished and underdeveloped. That lie had been whispered to me by one of the women writing down the information just a couple of minutes before that and I repeated it, very bravely.
The SS man eyed me up and down and said, 'you’re very small,' and the woman taking notes summoned up her courage and said, 'no, no, she has strong legs, she can work,' so the SS man shrugged and let it go.
It was a chance encounter lasting only a couple of minutes with a kind, young woman who I had never seen before and have never seen since, but I owe her my life, my survival. For everyone else who was with me on the transport from Theresienstadt was sent to the gas chamber in the days that followed.”
To watch the speech, click here.
To read the press release announcing her speech, click here.