Ruth Maiers dagbok

Presents selections from Maier's diaries - those written in Vienna in 1933-38 (the original version comprises 1,100 pages), letters she sent from Norway to her sister in England in 1939-40, and the diaries she kept in Norway in 1940-42. Maier, a Jew, was born in Vienna in 1920. Her father died in 1933. Her younger sister, Judith, immigrated to England in 1938; her mother and grandmother followed in 1939. Ruth opted to go to Norway in January 1939, to stay with a friend of her father in the town of Lillestrøm, with the intention of trying to get a visa for England or the USA, but she did not succeed. Maier evinced a talent in drawing, and worked as an artist's model after finishing her high school matriculation exams. In 1941 she joined the Women's Labor Service (mainly working on farms), where she met and became a close friend of Gunvor Hofmo, who later became a famous Norwegian poet. In October 1942 Maier was one of 532 Jews who were arrested and deported on the boat "Donau"; they were all sent to Auschwitz, where Maier perished in December 1942. Hofmo held on to Maier's diaries for over 50 years; they were only recently discovered. The diaries mainly describe Maier's personal feelings and problems in relating to others, and in particular her ambivalent sexual proclivities, with minor discussion of wartime events, her Jewish identity, and occasional encounters with antisemitism. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)