us-005578-irn515224
type: RecordSet
archival history: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
biographical history: Ruth Elias (1922-2008) was born Ruth Huppert in Moravska Ostrava, Czechoslovakia. Her parents Friedrich (Fritz) Huppert and Malvina Ringer divorced when she and her sister Edith (b. 1920) were still young. She and Edith moved in with their paternal grandmother and then with their uncle, but they kept in close contact with their father. Ruth trained to be a pianist and hoped to attend a musical academy in Prague. Fritz was a member of a Zionist movement, and Ruth and Edith joined Maccabi Hatzair. In March 1939 Germany occupied Bohemia and Moravia. The foreman of the family business who had declared himself a Volksdeutscher (ethnic German) took over the business one day later. Ruth's aunt and uncle were forced out of their house which was adjacent to their butcher shop. Shortly after that, Ruth had to leave school. That fall, all Jewish males of working age had to report for forced labor, and Ruth's father was forced to clean streets. He escaped to his sister in Brno and arranged for Ruth and Edith to go to an aunt in the town of Vyskov. After a month he sent for his children and paid a Czech farmer to allow him and his daughters to work on a farm in Pozorice near Brno. In 1942 Ruth and her family were deported to Theresienstadt ghetto where she married her boyfriend, Koni, a ghetto policeman. She and her husband were able to build a little apartment in house L408 with another couple so that they could have some time together. In 1943 Ruth became pregnant. She begged doctors in Theresienstadt to terminate her pregnancy, but they refused. She and Koni were taken on a transport to the family camp of Auschwitz. After moving rocks back and forth in Auschwitz, she managed to get assigned to a leather workshop. In July 1944 there was a selection in the family camp, and she was subsequently moved to the women's barrack. Ruth was sent to Hamburg Germany to clear rubble along with 2000 other women. After three days of work, her block elder reported Ruth and another pregnant wo…
date: circa 1918-1947
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: eng
has or had some members with language: ces
has or had some members with language: heb
has or had some members with language: deu
has or had subject: 701
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn515224
record resource extent: folders 4
record resource structure: The Ruth and Kurt Elias papers are arranged as a single series.
results or resulted from: 1
scope and content: The Ruth and Kurt Elias papers include correspondence from Kurt’s father asking relatives to help him immigrate to the United States and providing his address at the Mauthausen concentration camp; identification papers for Ruth, her sister, and Kurt’s father; and photographs depicting Ruth and Kurt Elias and their families before the war and after liberation in Czechoslovakia.
title: Ruth and Kurt Elias papers