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Ruth Kluger, professor emerita of German at UC Irvine, will address Germany’s Federal Parliament, “Bundestag,” on January 27, 2016 on the occasion of their "Gedenkstunde für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus," which is translated as “Hour of Remembrance for the Victims of National Socialism.”

Established in 1996 by federal President Roman Herzog, the Gedenkstunde für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus has featured renowned politicians, authors and activists as speakers, including Elie Wiesel, historian and writer, and Imre Kertész, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002.

The theme of this year’s memorial is “Forced Labor,” which Kluger participated in as an inmate of a concentration camp in her youth. The Chancellor and President of Germany will be present at the memorial as well as the members of parliament and representatives of civic organizations and the press.

"It will be a joy to talk to the legislators of the country that has proved the most generous in Europe in opening its doors to the flood of refugees from Syria. This is in stark and overwhelming contrast to the crimes that Germany was responsible for in the last century and which are my topic in the memorial hour to which I have been invited. It makes for a positive framework to a very dark tale," said Kluger.

Born in Vienna, Kluger is best known for her autobiography, weiter leben. Eine Jugend (1992), which she translated into English as Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (2001). The English version is taught in university courses throughout the U.S., including UCI’s Humanities Core Course. Kluger’s childhood in Vienna changed radically in 1938 when Hitler’s troops marched into Austria. She was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942 and from there to Auschwitz. The book chronicles her life in the camps and in occupied Germany after the war, as well as her later life as a U.S. academic.

A distinguished scholar of German literature and culture and of women’s literature, Kluger is a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung and has also been elected to the German PEN Club. She continues to produce essays and articles that have been published in major German and Austrian newspapers.

Photo credit: Daniel Anderson/UC Irvine
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