Still Alive Book Report

Megan McDonald

Book Report: Still Alive This memoir Still Alive: A holocaust Girlhood remembered focuses on her life through life pre-war in Vienna, concentration camps by the Nazis, post war in Germany, and her time spent in the US. This book was published in 2001, with heavy focus on racism, antisemitism and World War II. A major theme in Stay Alive is Kruger’s hate of sentimentality, and emotions. Kluger states that this theme is a central focus in literature written about the holocaust, and which are most important in the novels and movies. This book isn’t like most other books, as it is brutally honest, demanding the reader to have certain thoughts and discussion. Throughout the memoir Ruth has recollections of her isolated Jewish

Kluger spent her first couple nights in New York in a shelter provided by a Jewish organization, but later was able to rent an apartment in mid-Manhattan. Kluger and her family were extremely poor when they came to New York, as her mother was only getting paid a few dollars an hour. Kluger ended up getting help from her uncle and some other family relatives. Kluger’s aunt, expressed to Ruth that she needed to forget what happened to her and move on with her life. But how could she wipe away her childhood she explained? Kluger attended Hunter College where they didn’t check completely on prior schooling, and counted her Straubing diploma. Kluger emphasizes that there is still a status associated for young woman, to be careful of street crime and to not go anywhere like parks, by yourself at night which she says victimizes the weak (page 183). Kluger was searching for a father figure in her life, by trying to get make refugees to fill in the gaps and memories of their own holocaust experiences. Kluger tried to confide in her therapist Dr. Fessler, but it ended up having negative effects, which led to poems she wrote to focus her emotions. Ruth met fellow Jewish refugees at her college and became good friends with them, which her therapist denied she could ever do. Kluger critiques the museums in New York as she explains that the various Shoah museums and reconstituted concentration camp sites do the exact opposite, they don’t take you in, they spit you out. They impede critical faculty, they tell you what you are supposed to think. Later she was admitted to the University of California at Berkley, where she studied literature. In her later life, the toxic relationship with her mother still was held over her shoulders as she destroyed her