Ruth Posner

Ruth Posner was born Ruth Wajsberg in Warsaw in 1929 and lived with her parents Anna and Marian. Her father was an artist and a chartered accountant, and her mother designed and made underwear. Before the war the Wajsbergs moved to Radom where they had relatives. Ruth’s family saw themselves as Poles first and foremost and she attended a Catholic school. By the end of the Holocaust, Ruth’s parents and most of her other family members were killed. Only one aunt remained at the end of the war.

After the Germans invaded, Ruth remembers being thrown out of her home and marched to the Radom Ghetto. Ruth’s father arranged for Ruth and her aunt to work in a factory making leather goods. It was hard, slave labour. However, the factory was located outside of town and helped keep Ruth away from the deportations from the ghetto for a time. Once a week the workers were marched to the town baths and on one of these occasions Ruth and her aunt escaped to the non-Jewish side with the non-Jewish passports her father had organised.

Ruth hid with a Catholic family but during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, she was taken prisoner and sent to Germany with her aunt. She was imprisoned as a Polish Catholic. Towards the end of the war, the Germans put Ruth and her aunt on a train which ended up in the large town of Essen to do slave labour. The Allies were bombing the city and many around Ruth were killed. They hid on a local farm until the end of the war. Then the aunt found work in the kitchen of a compound where American and British soldiers came for breakfast. An RAF squadron leader, named Sidney Scott, turned out to be Jewish and was looking for Jewish survivors. While her aunt went to live with relatives in Brussels because she spoke French, it was decided for Ruth to come the UK. 

She arrived as a 16-year-old and did not speak the language. For a while she lived in a hostel with other refugees in Reading. Despite her experiences during the Holocaust, Ruth was determined to start a new life, learn English and go back to school to make up for lost time. She was helped by the two German Jewish refugees who ran the hostel.

Ruth eventually went to a good school and later to a college where dance and drama were the primary subjects. After three years at the college, she continued her training with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre. She became a member and stayed with them for 18 years, performing and teaching.

Ruth married her husband Michael in 1950 and they moved for a couple of years to the newly-founded state of Israel. Ruth joined a small dance company. When Michael got a job with UNICEF, they moved to New York. Ruth first went to Hunter College (and after 2 years obtained an MA in Theatre Arts). She then changed profession and studied acting, forging a successful career which has lasted until the present.

She was awarded the BEM (Order of the British Empire Medal) in the 2022 Queen's New Year’s Honours List for her services to Holocaust Education and Awareness.

Key words: Wajsberg (Weisberg). Warsaw. Radom Ghetto. Essen. Slave labour. Kendrich School, Reading. Sophie Friedländer. Southampton. Haifa. New York. Julliard. Copenhagen. Dr. Schneider. London Contemporary Dance Theatre. HET.