Ruth Berta Pories

Ruth Berta Pories was born in Munich on June 11, 1921, the daughter of Beatrice and Siegfried Pories. She grew up with her sister Margot Helene, three years younger than her, at Viktor-Scheffel-Strasse 21; in 1932 the family moved to Ottostrasse 3a, where Siegfried Pories owned a shop selling radios and gramophones. Ruth Pories attended the Luisengymnasium high school from April 1931 to March 1937. Her mother supported her and was in close contact with her teachers. Ruth was very athletic and was a member of the Jewish gymnastics and sport club. Her mother died in March 1935, when Margot was thirteen.
To escape Nazi persecution, the Jewish family emigrated to Amsterdam in March 1938, where their final address was Euterpestraat 39. In 1939, Siegfried Pories married Johanna Lewinski from Berlin. In Amsterdam, Ruth Pories began an apprenticeship as a milliner. Following the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, the Jewish population there, too, was subjected to persecution and deprivation of rights. In the same street as the Pories family lived was the local office of the security police and the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) headed by SS-Sturmbannführer Willy Lages, who was responsible for the deportation of the Jews, including Ruth and Margot Pories. The sisters probably received their deportation orders on July 5, 1942 for “labour deployment in the east”. It is not known whether they were among the 1,000 or so people who obeyed this or whether they were picked up in a street raid on July 14, 1942. Ruth and Margot Pories were probably taken on the first transport from Amsterdam to Westerbork transit camp on July 15, 1942. The people were forced to walk the final stretch to the transit camp on foot. On the very same day, the SS deported Ruth and Margot Pories to Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. This, the first transport from the Netherlands, arrived on July 17, 1942. The conditions in the Auschwitz-Birkenau women’s camp in Summer 1942 were especially horrendous. There was not even any water. It is not known how long Ruth and Margot Pories managed to stay alive under these conditions. Their father Siegfried Pories and his wife Johanna did not survive the Shoah either: the SS deported them to Auschwitz in February 1944 and murdered them there.(Text: Barbara Hutzelmann; editor: C. Fritsche; translation: C. Hales)