Her father, a Jewish gynaecologist, lost his license and was later sent to prison for performing an illegal abortion.

[5] In September 1942,[2] she was deported to Theresienstadt at the age of 10, together with her mother; her father had tried to flee abroad, but was detained and murdered.

After the end of World War II in 1945, she settled in the Bavarian town of Straubing and later studied philosophy and history at the Philosophisch-theologische Hochschule in Regensburg.

She worked as a professor of German literature in Cleveland, Kansas, and Virginia, and at Princeton and UC Irvine.

Her memoir, Still Alive, which focuses primarily on her youth in concentration camps, is critical of the museum culture surrounding the Holocaust.