To translate a life : understanding the holocaust through autobiographical stories

This thesis seeks to understand some of the aspects and events of the Holocaust through autobiographical stories, with a particular focus on what it means to translate one's life. As there are many different ways one can learn about the Holocaust, this thesis takes a comparative approach of the works of two authors with very different life circumstances: Ruth Kluger's autobiographical works weiter leben: Eine Jugend, and Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, and Nora Krug's graphic memoirs Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home, and Heimat: Ein deutsches Familienalbum. While both authors have in common that they have written their works in both English and German, the lives of these authors are remarkably different: Ruth Kluger is a Jewish survivor of the genocide from Austria, living in the United States, and Nora Krug is neither a survivor nor Jewish, but rather, a German living in the United States with familial ties to Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, in the translation of their lives into their works, both authors raise many questions and concerns about their identity, displacement (forced for Kluger, chosen for Krug), their sense or lack of belonging, and how different aesthetic forms are necessary for them in the constructing of their life narratives, and in tandem with each other, they offer a way to further understand the events of the Holocaust.