Background
Ruth Kluger was born on October 30, 1931, in Vienna, Austria. She grew up as the Nazis assumed power and overran Europe. Her father was a physician and the family lived comfortably, but this life was shattered when she was eleven, as she and her mother were deported to the forced Jewish settlement at Theresienstadt, and then to the notorious death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Christianstadt. At Christianstadt, Kluger was made to work, theoretically helping the German war effort, although as she noted, she was so young and so weak that her contribution was essentially worthless.
Her father and her beloved half-brother were killed in the camps, but Kluger and her mother escaped from Christianstadt, survived bombings by American fighter planes, and in 1947 managed to leave Europe, spending two weeks in steerage on the ship Ernie Pyle before docking in New York City. She was sixteen years old.