Introduction

Ruth Klein’s story is about merchants and landowners?aristocratic Polish Jews. It’s about their lives in refugee and concentration camps. About parents who survived the Holocaust but could not overcome the tragedy they had experienced, and about their children, who became indirect victims of the atrocities endured by Holocaust victims.

After their liberation, Ruth’s parents were brought to the Displaced Person Camps in Germany, where they awaited departure to the United States. They were traumatized, starving, and impoverished?but they were among the survivors. Once in America, however, their struggles didn’t end. Nearly penniless, Ruth’s family?and the close-knit group of Polish refugees they belonged to?were placed for settlement in Los Angeles, where they lived in poverty only a few miles away from the wealth and glamor of Hollywood and Beverly Hills in the early 1950s. Ruth tells how, time after time, her parents had their dreams broken, only to rebuild them again. She also shares what it was like to grow up with parents who were permanently damaged by the effects of the war. Theirs was a dysfunctional household; her parents found great joy and delight moving through life’s experiences in their new country, yet tumult and discord colored their world as well. As a young girl, Ruth developed a passionate relationship with the piano, which allowed her to express a wide range of feelings through her music?and survive the chaos at home. Full of both humor and unfathomable tragedy, Surviving the Survivors is Ruth’s story of growing up in an environment unique in time and place, and of how, ultimately, her upbringing gave her a keen appreciation for the value of life and made her, like her parents, a survivor.

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Excerpt

THE REPLACEMENT

Monterey Park, California: 1956

When I was nine years old, my father tried to commit suicide and murder my baby brother. I found them after I had got my younger sister ready for her bath and went to look for my brother. The door to my parents’ bedroom was closed, and when I entered, I smelled gas coming from the 1950s-style gas heater. My father was lying on the bed with my brother next to him. They had plastic bags over their heads. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. How much did you learn about the Holocaust? (World history and family history)
2. What did your learn about survivors and their family life after the war?
3. We’re you familiar with the Nazi policies and murderous attempts to exterminate European Jewry?
4. What are your thoughts about trauma being transmitted to the second generation of the Holocaust?
5. Did this book bring awareness to the idea that many Jews believed their wealth could save them, but instead it made them targets for elimination?
6. If you’re familiar with the events from 1939-1945, did you gain knowledge from this memoir about the effects on the second generation as well as the survivors?

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