Book description
Ruth Maier was born into a middle-class Jewish family in interwar
Vienna. Following the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938, the world of
the substantial Viennese Jewish community crumbled. In early 1939, her
sister having left for England, Ruth emigrated to Norway and lived
with a family in Lillestrøm, about thirty miles from Oslo. Although
she loved many things about her new country and its people, Ruth's
relationship with her hosts soon turned stale, then sour. Ruth became
increasingly isolated in Norway until she met a soul mate, Gunvor
Hofmo, who was to become a celebrated poet. Norway itself became a
Nazi conquest in April 1940, and Ruth's attempts to join the rest of
her family - now in Britain - became ever more urgent. She never left
Norway, and in November 1942 she was deported to Auschwitz where she
was exterminated on arrival. She had recently turned twenty-two.
Ruth Maier kept a diary from 1934 until just before she was
murdered. Despite being only in her teens she shows a sophisticated
understanding of the political forces shaping central Europe as well
as extraordinary prescience. However, the book is much more than just
historical documentation. In a lucid yet highly lyrical style, with an
incisive talent for narrative and a sharp wit, Ruth explores universal
themes of isolation, identity, friendship, love, sexuality, desire,
morality, justice and sacrifice. Most of all, however, she seeks what
it means to be a human being. Published only recently for the first
time in Norway, Ruth Maier's Diary is one of the most moving
testimonies to emerge from this dark period of European history.
Ruth Maier was born into a middle-class Jewish family in interwar
Vienna. She emigrated to Norway and was deported to Auschwitz in
November 1942, where she was killed on arrival, aged only twenty-two.
Ruth's diary is a testament to the remarkable writer she could have become.
The diary came to light after the book's editor, Jan Erik Vold,
found sections of the manuscript amongst the papers of Ruth's friend,
the eminent Norwegian poet, Gunvor Hofmo, following her death in 1995.
