Ruth Selma Wilmersdörfer was born in Munich on June 4, 1924 to Siegbert Wilmersdörfer and his wife Frieda Luzie, née Berliner. Her father ran a business selling work clothing. The family lived at Ismaninger Straße 152. Ruth attended the Städtische Lyzeum (municipal lyceum) at St.-Anna-Platz, located at St.-Anna-Straße 20, which at that time was a girls’ school. After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the Wilmersdörfer family were victims of the anti-Semitic persecution of the Jews. 1938 at the latest Ruth was no longer permitted to attend her school at St.-Anna-Platz. In a letter to the police dated May 14, 1938 her father Siegbert Wilmersdörfer describes his problems caused because he was no longer being supplied by “aryan” firms. A trading permit he applied for was refused, which meant that the family no longer had any livelihood. In the course of the “Kristallnacht” pogroms on November 9, 1938 Siegbert Wilmersdörfer was deported to Dachau concentration camp and not released until four weeks later. In February 1939, Siegbert and Frieda Wilmersdörfer tried to send Ruth to England in a “Kindertransport” (children’s transport) – in vain. The family also made efforts to emigrate to the USA, to Shanghai and to Panama, but were unable to gain entry anywhere. In spring 1939, the Nazis forced the Wilmersdörfer family to leave their apartment at Ismaninger Straße 152. Ruth and her parents were quartered in “Jew apartments”, firstly at Hermann-Lingg-Straße 16 and subsequently at Hermann-Lingg-Straße 15. On November 11, 1941 the family had to move to the “Judensiedlung” (“Jewish Quarter”) Milbertshofen at Knorrstraße 148. Ruth Wilmersdörfer, her father Siegbert and her mother Frieda were among the nearly 1,000 Jewish men, women and children whom the Gestapo (Secret Police) deported from Munich to Kaunas on November 20, 1941. There, SS men of Einsatzgruppe A, a mobile killing squad, shot all the deportees on November 25, 1941. (text Schüler*innen des P-Seminars „Erinnerungszeichen“ am Städtischen St.-Anna-Gymnasium 2019/2021, editor C. Fritsche, translation C. Hales)
