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Special Tributes
Special Tribute to Ruth Klüger
By: Peter R. Erspamer,
Ph.D.
Dr.
Ruth Klüger (also known as Ruth Angress) is Emerita Professor of German
at the University of California-Irvine and the author of the European bestseller,
weiter leben. She currently resides in California and in Göttingen,
Germany.
Ruth
Klüger was born to a Jewish household in Vienna in 1931. Her father
was killed in a concentration camp during the Holocaust while Ruth was
still in grade school. When Ruth was only twelve, the Nazis deported her
and her mother to the Czech concentration camp, Terezin. Subsequently,
the Klugers were interned in the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen.
At the end of the war, the SS evacuated many of the death camps by leading
the surviving prisoners on death marches. Malnourished inmates were forced
to walk on foot from concentration camps in Eastern Europe to those within
Germany. During such a death march, Ruth and her mother made a desperate
attempt to escape--and survived. They then went into hiding in war-torn
Germany with the help of a sympathetic pastor.
Upon
emigrating to America, Ruth Klüger earned her Ph.D. from the University
of California,Berkeley. She taught at the University of Virginia, the University
of Kansas, Princeton University, and the University of California-Irvine.
She distinguished herself through scholarly writings on the German authors
Kleist, Lessing, Stifter, and Grillparzer. One of her former colleagues
at Princeton, Professor Paul T. Roberge, recollects her selfless mentoring
very fondly and declares to this day that she is one of his favorite people
in the teaching profession.
Dr.
Klüger's most enduring legacy will be her 1992 autobiography, weiter
leben: Eine Jugend ("Continue Living: My Youth"). Published by a relatively
obscure German publisher, it became an unexpected bestseller throughout
Central Europe--and lifted that publisher out of obscurity. The memoir
chronicles Ruth Klüger's internment in Nazi concentration camps and
her emigration to America. The primacy of human life is one of the main
themes of the book.
One
of the things that makes Ruth Klüger's book unique is her utterly
uncompromising attitude toward people portrayed in the book, including
her mother and herself. This gives the book a certain relentless bleakness
that is somehow overwhelmingly appropriate for the subject matter. In both
Night and All Rivers Flow to the Sea, Elie Wiesel reflects
on his unconditional love for his father and how it helped him survive
the concentration camps. Ruth Klüger's narrative in weiter leben
reads like a complete reversal of Elie Wiesel's. The contentious, fractious
relationship with her mother merits some under-the-surface interpretation.
Ruth was twelve when she and her mother were deported to the concentration
camps. Her aggression toward her mother is grounded in the fear that her
mother might leave her, as her father had. She feels deep sorrow for the
death of her father, who died in a concentration camp. She recollects the
trauma of her father's death:
Darum
habe ich auch jahrelang, nein jahrzehntelang nicht glauben wollen and können,
daß er wirklich vergast worden ist. Er ist zunächst von österreich
nach Italien gefahren. Und dort hat er den Fehler begangen, aus einem faschistischen
Land in ein demokratisches zu flüchten, nämlich nach Frankreich.
Da haben ihn die Franzosen den Deutschen ausgeliefert.(Klüger, 33)
[For years and even decades, I did not want to believe
that he was really gassed. At first he travelled from Austria to Italy.
Then he made the mistake of fleeing from a fascist country into a democratic
one, namely France. The French turned him over to the Germans.]
She
feels pain over the senseless loss of her father, in which the French were
complicit. She is further traumatized by a fear for the loss of her mother,
which she could not acknowledge. This was in turn transferred into an aggression
toward her mother, that may have had lifesaving benefits for both of them.
On one occasion, Ruth's mother suggests a joint suicide on the electric
fences of Auschwitz. Both lives are saved when Ruth recoils in horror at
the thought. But, on another occasion, during a Selection, Ruth's mother
upbraids her for failing to lie about her age and insists that she stand
in line again and give an inflated age in order to avoid selection. Ruth's
life is thereby saved.
Another
source of conflict between Ruth and her mother is her brother Georg, who
like his father died in a concentration camp. Ruth competes with her mother
in terms of mourning him: "Vielleicht bin ich einfach eifersüchtig
auf ihr größeres Recht, ihn zu betrauen."(Klüger, 94) [Perhaps
I am simply jealous of her greater right to mourn him.] The deaths of her
father and her brother are a source of conflict between Ruth and her mother.
Their shared loci of trauma become points of competition between them,
revealing how the Holocaust shattered this particular family.
In
one passage, there is a jarring opposition to the filial piety of Elie
Wiesel:
Liesel
ist ihrem Vater treu geblieben. Der konnte nicht raus, wie
sie mir erklärte, weil er zu viel gewußt hat. Daher könne
sie sich nicht zum Arbeitstransport melden, obwohl man sie viel eher als
mich hätte nehmen müssen, denn sie war ein paar Jahre älter.
Sie hat es nicht einmal versucht, sie wollte bei ihm bleiben; sie ist mit
ihm vergast worden. Sie hatte absolut keine Illusion über ihr Sterben.
Ich hätte mich für meine Mutter nicht geopfert. (Klüger,
135) [Liesel remained true to her father. He could not get out, as she
explained, because he knew too much. Therefore she could not register for
a work transport, although they would have been more likely to take her
than me, because she was a couple of years older. She never even tried
it; she wanted to remain with him; she was gassed with him. She had absolutely
no illusion about her impending death. I would not have sacrificed myself
for my mother.]
Elie
Wiesel's description of wanting to stay wit his father no matter which
side of the selection it put him on is reflected in the situation of Liesel,
who wanted to remain loyal to her father unto death. Ruth's conscious disavowal
of loyalty toward her mother may be more than a reflection of grim Holocaust
situational ethics, but may be masking subconscious feelings of love that
Ruth remains unaware of, because of her competition with her mother. The
experiences of the Holocaust often made adults regress, while children
had to grow up fast. Ruth sees her mother not as a parent figure, but as
a peer with whom she is a ruthless competitor.
The
fractious relationship between Ruth and her mother may have helped them
both to survive the camps, because they were concentrating on a secondary
conflict that was less devastating than the primary crisis of dealing with
the everyday trauma of the camps. The conflict between mother and daughter
acted as a sort of diversion which made the survival of both of them more
possible.
Even
Ruth Klüger's descriptions of her mother's misfortunes are marked
by a certain resentment:
Meine
Mutter verlor irgendwann den Kopf and schrie zurück. Dafür mußte
sie dann zur Strafe auf dem schon erwähnten steinernen Kamin, dem
Mittelstreife der Baracke, knien, eine Stellung, die nach ganz kurzer Zeit
qualvoll wird. Sie war in elender Verfaßung, völlig außer
sich, der Irrsinn flackerte ihr in den Augen, als sie, schon knieend, noch
weiter auf die Beamtete einschrie.(Klüger, 137) [My mother lost her
head and screamed back. As punishment, she had to kneel on the stone hearth,
a position that became tortuous after a short time. She was absolutely
beside herself, insanity flitted in her eyes, as she continued to yell
at the camp administrators.]
The
passage is steeped in resentment, although it is not without a certain
pity for the mother. The author's resentment for her mother is a result
of the elder Klüger having become a lightning rod for Ruth's aggressiveness
against her persecutors. The eighteenth century philosopher Moses Mendelssohn
once observed, "Revenge seeks its object, and when it cannot find it, it
eats its own flesh." With the possible exception of Jean Amery, I cannot
think of any author who has helped me understand human trauma more than
Ruth Klüger.
Biography
Peter
R. Erspamer is the author of _The Elusiveness
of
Tolerance: The "Jewish Question" from Lessing to
the
Napoleonic Wars_, which received the Choice
Outstanding
Academic Book Award in 1997.
He
has taught at several midwestern universities and he also
lectures
in public venues, including community centers
and
houses of worship. He is currently working on a
new
book with the title, "Before the Holocaust:
European
Jews Between Emancipation and Destruction."
Education
Dr.
Peter Erspamer attended Grinnell College, University of Freiburg in Germany,
University of Bonn in Germany (Fulbright Scholar), and University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ph.D. cum laude in Comparative Literature and German Cultural History with
Research Focus on Jewish Studies.
Teaching
Visiting
Assistant Professor at Carroll College (Waukesha), Marquette University,
Indiana
University/Purdue
University of Indianapolis, Fort Hays University, University of Missouri,
and
Winona
State University. Citation from the Teaching Committee at IUPUI for having
had "a remarkable and positive impact."
© Copyright Judy Cohen, 2001.
All rights reserved.
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