‘Still Alive’ Analysis
Introduction
Still alive depicts Ruth Kluger’s journey, since when she lived a good life as a doctors’ daughter in Vienna, and along with the forced Jewish living up to the way station of Terezin. It also covers the death camps up to where she escaped from a work camp. The story illustrates the bad experiences undergone by Jewish women, such as diseases and hunger in the concentration camps. As per the book, Hitler disliked the Jewish community, exposing them to life-threatening circumstances. Identification numbers were given to Jewish people as an easier way to know them and tattooed to their skin. Still Alive by Ruth Kluger reveals the horrific outcomes of the Holocaust that faced Jewish women and men, such as hunger, diseases, death, and sexual assaults.
Kluger was a Jewish who experienced a holocaust with her family where they were forced into the concentration camps by Hitler. However, Kluger managed to run away from Hitler’s oppression camps; hence the title ‘still alive.’ the primary purpose of the book was to equip the people about the issues of the Holocaust and the fact that it was very challenging to a Jewish woman in the reign of Hitler (Kluger, 2003). In Hitler’s leadership, many Jewish women died due to the severe conditions they were exposed to, attributed to his hatred for the community.
A critique is that ‘Still live’ managed to touch the United States; however, the nerve touched was smaller. Some critics found the book faulted other reviews such as ambivalent, especially its narrating voice. It created a similar voice in Kluger’s memoir and activities of the Holocaust. The text read Kluger’s name using a homogenous voice which embraced and encouraged an aspect of overall cultural conditioning describing the discourse of the Holocaust. Another major critique is that Kluger did not help any of her family members escape in the camps to avoid dying (Kluger, 2003). Her mother assisted in some instances, and in the end, due to the separation, she lacked anyone to confide with. She had to raise herself again and live a better life while many of her family members including the father and brother died in the camps, without any efforts to help them.
Kluger did not want to register as a holocaust survivor because she did not require being associated with the inequality that faced people in the concentration camps. Males were the only recognized survivors because the society was patriarchal. The Jews were not given any opportunity to make decisions, lacked any influence, and did not know what choices were made for them. She knew the situation was not an actual survival, but a forced one, making it illegitimate to register as a survivor. The Holocaust was associated with a violent killing of Jews by the Germans, while others died due to hunger and disease (Schulte-Sasse, Kluger, 2004). She did not accept registering as a survivor because ‘suffering did not unite the victims’ and criticized it as a pile of sentimental rubbish. Surviving in the course of the Holocaust was never expected, but death became normal. Registering to her meant recognizing being imprisoned in the camps and preparation for another holocaust.
Ruth Kluger faced racial oppression through her childhood. She spent some time in Vienna-Austria with her parents and struggled with the daily hatred of meeting the Jewish people. At the age of seven years, Germans led by Hitler invaded Austria controlling everything in it. Ruth encountered depression because nearly all her childhood was covered in the Holocaust. Some argue that Ruth did not have a youth because of the environment she faced with no freedom due to the Germans’ oppression. Boys were superior to girls in her childhood growth, and in the same case, men became superior to women in society.
Life in Auschwitz, according to Ruth Kluger, was complex as it was a no instructional institution. Survival was not even average, but death became normal. No one was taught anything good in the concentration camps, and intolerance and disrespect to humanity were standard practices. Life in Auschwitz increased amorality instead of morality among the victims and the survivors (Kluger, 1993). The energy that they were forced to live in Auschwitz was similar to that of the cancer patients. There was a higher level of patriarchy in the concentration camps, and decisions were made only by the men. Masculinity was directed to silence women via rape and sexual assaults that forced them to acquire risky pregnancies and even abortions. Male dominance was misused in Auschwitz to oppress women, especially the Jewish prisoners. In her statement, ‘the soil in which you stood wanted you to disappear’ meant that death was knocking on their doors every other time. Life was dangerous due to attacks from the Nazi’s exposing them to horrific and deadly circumstances. The term also showed the danger of the environment, concentration camps.
For women in the concentration camps, life was brutal, and they could not make any decisions regarding their lives. All of them were forced into concentration camps where they encountered forceful rape, death, and loss of their children (Kluger, 2003). Women were sometimes separated from their children leading to depression and other horrific events of the Holocaust. All women lacked any influence on what could be decided for them by the Germans. Forced labor was the order of the day for the Jewish women in the camps. Patriarchy was evident even in the camps, and women could decide anything for themselves. In the end, any holocaust woman survivor acted like cancer patients. The holocaust experiences for women were not recognized. They seemed to render them outside a realm of acknowledged war memories that males owned. Women in the camps struggled with risky pregnancies, abortions, and sexual assaults such as rape throughout their stay in the camps. Many of the women died due to starvation, through suffocation in the gas chambers and via the bullets of the SS soldiers. The labor and concentration camps were developed to take many Jews to death.
Kluger and her mother escaped from the camps and flew to Bavaria, and the two later emigrated to America. In the United States, Kluger acquired learning at Hunter College. She studied German literature. she began teaching as a professor in German universities, and her efforts got recognized by the German authorities, especially on her literary works. Getting married to a German husband ultimately made it easier for Kluger to become a German.
Kluger hated the German museums because the data of previous concentration camps there could efficiently act as the model for another massacre. They vividly explained the experiences that people were imprisoned there. She had to inform the Auschwitz museums to remove her poems because they were displayed without her consent (Schulte-Sasse, Kluger, 2004). Kluger acknowledged Vienna her original home and not Auschwitz. The information in the museums, in her view, could be used to plan another holocaust in the future.
Conclusion
Still Alive by Ruth Kluger revealed the horrific outcomes of the Holocaust that faced Jewish women and men, such as hunger, diseases, death, and sexual assaults. The pursuit of selfhood against every odd is learned in “Still Alive.” Kluger observed the importance of not relying on any comforting assumptions. Nazi’s concentration camps exposed Jewish women to rape, hunger, diseases, and sexual assaults. In the Holocaust, patriarchy was dominant; hence women had no choice for themselves. Society could not recognize a woman Holocaust survivor due to patriarchal nature.
