Taking Chances

friday, march 11, 2022

Rachel Genuth (known today as Ruth Mermelstein) was born in 1929 to Blima Davidowitz and Moshe Genuth, in Sighet, Romania. In 1940, Hitler awarded the region (Transylvania) in which the vibrant Jewish town was located to the Hungarians, and thus began a series of tragedies and hardships that directly affected Rachel and her family. In May of 1944, after the German takeover of Hungary, Rachel, her family, and the entire Jewish population of Sighet were deported to Auschwitz. It was on Birkenau’s selection ramp that Rachel last saw her parents and four younger siblings.

In this program Rachel Ruth will share her story of survival, which involved luck and also a readiness to take chances, calculated risks, as a fourteen- and fifteen-year-old.

Rachel Ruth lives in North Bellmore, New York, and is a speaker for the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. Her remarkable story is told in All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, by Bernice Lerner, her daughter.

All the Horrors of War: A Jewish Girl, a British Doctor, and the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen is available at a 30% discount by using the code HTWN at press.jhu.edu. (Kindle and audio versions are available through Amazon.)