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Ruth Kluger
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“I used to think that after the war I would have something of interest and significance to tell. A contribution. But people didn't want to hear about it, or if they did listen, it was in a certain pose, an attitude assumed for this special occasion; it was not as partners in a conversation, but as if I had imposed on them and they were graciously indulging me. The current craze for oral history and interviewing harbors a related flaw of one-sidedness, even though the interviewer is doing the imposing: he or she contributes nothing except and implied superiority to suffering. Beware of this kind of awe which easily turns into its opposite, disgust. For we like to keep the objects of both emotions at arm’s length, in instinctive revulsion.”
― Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
― Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
“Where there is no grave, we are condemned to go on mourning. Or we become like animals and don't mourn at all. (I know that even some animals mourn). By a grave I don't necessarily mean a place in a cemetery, but surely clear knowledge about the death of someone you have known. For my mother, there was never a day on which she could be sure that the two, her husband and the boy, had not escaped. Hope was like a limited quantity of liquid which gradually evaporates.”
― Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
― Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
“Remembering is a branch of witchcraftt; its tool is incantation. I often say as if it were a joke – but it's true – that instead of God, I believe in ghosts. To conjure up with the dead you have to dangle the bait of the present before them, the flesh of the living, to coax them out of their inertia. You have to grate and scrape the old roots with tools from the shelves of ancient kitchens. Use your best wooden spoons with the longest handles to whisk into the broth of our fathers the herbs our daughters have grown in their gardens. If I succeed, together with my readers – and perhaps a few men will join us in the kitchen – we could exchange magic formulas like favorite recipes and season to taste the marinade with the old stories and histories offer us, in as much comfort as our witches’ kitchen provides. It won't get too cozy, don't worry: where we stir our cauldron, there will be cold and hot currents from half-open windows, unhinged doors, and earthquake-prone walls.”
― Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
― Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
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