Early life
Rut Wermuth was born in 1928 in the small town of Kołomyja, Stanislawowskie in eastern Poland. She was born toFugitive
In 1941, when she was just 13 years old, the German occupiers moved the family first to the local ghetto, and then herded them onto a cattle train bound for the death camp of Belzec. Her two brothers had earlier been separated from the family; Pawel had been executed by the Germans in the Szeparowce forest while Salek had fled the German invasion, following the retreating Russians. Rut and her parents managed to escape the death train through a hole in the side of their cattle compartment, but during the course of their escape her father was killed. Her mother subsequently managed to assume a false identity to get a position as a maid in a local Manor House, but was unable to keep Rut since she had no papers. Rut decided to assume a false identity and go to the last place the Nazis would think of looking for her: to volunteer for work inside Germany. Rut survived for the rest of the war working in various positions in western Germany; at a shoe factory, in the household of a well connected German, and at the BMW plant in Allach (nearMarried life
Rut struggled with whether to reveal her true identity to the Polish man who had shown kindness to her in Germany. However Witek was very supportive and continued to request her hand in marriage, not disturbed by her Jewish background. After the war they returned to their native Poland and were assigned accommodation in a small town in Lower Silesia. Witek worked as an engineer at a local spinning mill, and after completing her education Rut managed a bookshop. They had two daughters: Kristina and Wiesia.Reunion
Rut found out during the war that her mother had died- possibly from illness but probably because she was discovered by the German occupiers in Poland. After the war, she searched for the only remaining member of her family who might still be alive, her older brother Salek. Her search was complicated by the fact that she did not remember his full name, or birthdate. Through a series of meetings and correspondence with friends in New York and Israel, she discovered that Salek had also survived the war, and gone on to be a respected journalist and commentator. Like Rut, he had taken an assumed name during the war,Author
Rut wrote her memoirs, and in September 1999, the Polish version of "Spotkałam ludzi" ("Encounters with the Decent") won the David Ben Gurion Centenary Grand Prize. The memoirs were also published in German in 2006, and Rut has spoken to many schoolchildren in Germany and Poland about her experiences. An English translation of the book under the title "Leap for Life" was published in 2010.Bibliography
* *Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wermuth, Rut 1928 births Living people Nazi-era ghetto inmates 20th-century Polish Jews Polish memoirists Polish expatriates in Germany People from Kolomyia