<p class="bodytext">Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor Ruth Klueger has died aged 88 at her home in California, her Austrian publisher said on Wednesday.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The Zsolnay publishing house confirmed to AFP that Klueger had passed away on the night between Monday and Tuesday after a long illness.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Klueger, who received many prestigious awards for her writing about her experience during the Holocaust, was also known for her outspoken stance on Nazi Germany's atrocities.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"We survivors are not responsible for forgiveness. I perceived resentment as an appropriate feeling for an injustice that can never be atoned for," Klueger once told Austrian media.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Born in Vienna in 1931, Klueger was 10 years old when the Nazi regime separated her from her father, a Jewish gynaecologist, and deported her and her mother, a nurse, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.</p>.<p class="bodytext">They were later moved to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Klueger, now 12, began composing poetry in her head.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Her father and half-brother were killed, but the two women ended up in Christianstadt concentration camp and managed to escape during a so-called death march.</p>.<p class="bodytext">In 1947, Klueger and her mother emigrated to the US, where she studied library sciences and German in New York and at the University of Berkley, California.</p>.<p class="bodytext">She turned to writing about her own life after almost dying in a traffic accident in Germany.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood remembered" was among her most renowned and critically acclaimed works, described as "an unforgettable example of humanity" by Le Monde.</p>.<p class="bodytext">When her mother died in 2000, Klueger wrote that she "felt a sense of triumph, because this had been a human death, because she had survived and outlived the evil times and had died in her own good time, almost 100 years after she was born."</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Rarely does one meet people who have as much magnetism as Ruth Klueger," Herbert Ohrlinger, the head of Zsolnay, said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"What she experienced in her life, how she dealt with those experiences and what she made of them, is extraordinary," he said, adding it had been a "privilege" to know and work with her.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Toward the end of her life, Klueger grew increasingly political, describing German Chancellor Angela Merkel as "heroic" for her pro-migration stance.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"This country, which was responsible for the worst crimes of the century, has won the applause of the world today," the then 84-year-old scholar told the German parliament in 2016.</p>
<p class="bodytext">Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor Ruth Klueger has died aged 88 at her home in California, her Austrian publisher said on Wednesday.</p>.<p class="bodytext">The Zsolnay publishing house confirmed to AFP that Klueger had passed away on the night between Monday and Tuesday after a long illness.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Klueger, who received many prestigious awards for her writing about her experience during the Holocaust, was also known for her outspoken stance on Nazi Germany's atrocities.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"We survivors are not responsible for forgiveness. I perceived resentment as an appropriate feeling for an injustice that can never be atoned for," Klueger once told Austrian media.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Born in Vienna in 1931, Klueger was 10 years old when the Nazi regime separated her from her father, a Jewish gynaecologist, and deported her and her mother, a nurse, to the Theresienstadt concentration camp.</p>.<p class="bodytext">They were later moved to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Klueger, now 12, began composing poetry in her head.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Her father and half-brother were killed, but the two women ended up in Christianstadt concentration camp and managed to escape during a so-called death march.</p>.<p class="bodytext">In 1947, Klueger and her mother emigrated to the US, where she studied library sciences and German in New York and at the University of Berkley, California.</p>.<p class="bodytext">She turned to writing about her own life after almost dying in a traffic accident in Germany.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood remembered" was among her most renowned and critically acclaimed works, described as "an unforgettable example of humanity" by Le Monde.</p>.<p class="bodytext">When her mother died in 2000, Klueger wrote that she "felt a sense of triumph, because this had been a human death, because she had survived and outlived the evil times and had died in her own good time, almost 100 years after she was born."</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Rarely does one meet people who have as much magnetism as Ruth Klueger," Herbert Ohrlinger, the head of Zsolnay, said in a statement.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"What she experienced in her life, how she dealt with those experiences and what she made of them, is extraordinary," he said, adding it had been a "privilege" to know and work with her.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Toward the end of her life, Klueger grew increasingly political, describing German Chancellor Angela Merkel as "heroic" for her pro-migration stance.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"This country, which was responsible for the worst crimes of the century, has won the applause of the world today," the then 84-year-old scholar told the German parliament in 2016.</p>