Klüger, Ruth. "Weiter leben; eine Jugend". Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen, 1992. Translated into Dutch by Marion Offermans and published as "Verder leven; een jeugd". Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 1995. ISBN 90 234 3351 3

During a recent visit to Amsterdam, one of our friends insisted that I should read this book. She was also very curious to learn what I thought of it. Several "literary" bookshops no longer had the book in stock: I was told that it had been "sold out". In view of the contents of the book, I felt that that was a good thing, but it was unfortunate for me, because I didn't have much spare time to chase after it. The original price was about ¿45,00. However, the "De Slegte" bookshop in the Kalverstraat, a second hand and remainders specialist, had copies, and at only ¿14,90!

"Death, not sex, was the secret that the adults kept on whispering about. Therefore, you wanted to know more about it! I pretended that I could not sleep, requested that I might lie on the sofa in the living room (which we actually called "salon"). Of course, I did not go to sleep, but kept my head under the blanket and hoped to pick up something about the terrible news that was being discussed at the table. Sometimes it concerned unknown people, sometimes members of the family, always Jews."

These are the opening sentences of Part One, entitled "Vienna". In it we learn about a six years' old Jewish girl's daily adventures in Vienna after the "Anschluss", how she travels to school, how the Jews' rights are gradually suppressed, and later, how she slips into a cinema although that was already "verboten". Her father, a physician, may only treat Jewish patients. There is talk amongst the adults about escaping abroad, and the obstacle placed in their path by the authorities. Her father manages to escape to France. She stays behind with her mother who tries to keep up an appearance. The relationship between mother and daughter is a difficult one, but not only because of the absence of her father. Life in Vienna was the first common denominator for me. Although I never lived in Vienna, my father lived, studied and worked there for fourteen years, as a teenager and beyond. Descriptions were not unfamiliar although I ever spent only three days there, in 1955, not long after the Allied Occupation Forces withdrew from Austria.

Part Two is entitled "The camps". In 1942 mother and daughter are transported to Theresienstadt. Her life there, which she shares with a number of girls of the same age, is described in detail. Her mother works in the kitchen, and manages to bring her sometimes some extra food. After some time they are transported to Auschwitz, and then to Christianstadt. During a forced march six of them manage to escape. Their adventures as escaped Jews amongst a German population which is waiting for the Red Army to arrive, makes hair-raising reading as do so many earlier parts. Mother and daughter, together with another girl from Vienna, end up as DPs in the small Bavarian provincial town of Straubing. That was, for me, the second common-denominator: in my early days in London, I studied with an optometrist, a few years older than I, whose home town was the same Straubing. His strong Bavarian accent was at first very difficult to understand. However, that experience now helps me to even understand Schweizer-Deutsch!

Klüger then goes on to describe their experiences as Jews, as DPs, living amongst the German population. Her schooling had been interrupted by her years spent in the camps. She manages to get some sort of secondary education, and emigrates eventually to the United States. Her description of their life in New York, does not bring any familiarity for me, because I only ever spent a week there, as a tourist and visiting relatives. However, the inability of the people, both in Europe and the United States, to show only the slightest understanding or appreciation of what this young woman experienced as a child, is also for me a familiar theme, to which the author returns time and again. For instance, she visits a Vienna-born psychiatrist, formerly a friend of the family. He is prepared to see her out of the goodness of his heart. But even this man does not show the slightest understanding of what she has undergone, and how she has been affected by her experiences. After all, she was only a young child; so how could it have affected her? She could not have had an understanding of what she saw around her¿¿.. and so she soon gives up on him who insists that she acknowledges that he has been of assistance to her.

Finally, having become an academic, she is sent by her University to Göttingen, where she is in charge of the Californian study centre. Her experiences there, some forty years after the end of the War, are equally interesting, and not unfamiliar to many of us.

I read this book in translation and must admit, that it was a difficult book to read, because of the complicated sentences. This, no doubt, must (also have been) due to the translator having followed the complicated German sentence constructions. However, this is very much an aside and only meant for those who might venture to read the Dutch translation. I may well read this book again, some time, and mull again over the question whether any German, or anyone who has read it and has not got the same experience, will start to understand what we, who have, feel.

The author's dedication reads "To my Göttinger friends - a German book". And a German book it is: of high literary quality, it does not try to come to terms with human problems, created by inhumans. "Weiter leben" - "Verder leven": Life goes on.