My Thoughts on Still Alive

In Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, Ruth Kluger unsentimentally yet provocatively recalls the events leading up to and during what she and her family endured during the Holocaust. She survived the concentration camps, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Gross-Rosen. The way she chronicles her past experiences highlights her strong and feisty personality. Sometimes her unemotional and rather cutting tone or voice give me the impression that deep within her soul she is bitter and angry (and I think she really is...I wouldn't be surprised and I wouldn't blame her for it...). One thing she said shocked me, but made me really wonder if indeed it is true. Arguing with a German graduate student, she said, "Absolutely nothing good came out of the concentration camps...and he expects catharsis, purgation, the sort of thing you go to the theater for?" The way she writes is very thought-provoking and often philosophical.