Ruth Lieberman Drescher (z”l)
Born January 23, 1934
Ruth Lieberman Drescher (z”l) was born in Stuttgart, Germany to Eduard and Gerty Lieberman. She had one sister. When Ruth was four years old, her father received a phone call from a friend who worked at a police station in Germany. The caller warned her father that something was going to happen: it was the event that is now known as Kristallnacht.
“My father […] had no interest in leaving Germany. He thought, I later learned, that all these people were foolishly disrupting their lives. That Hitler madness was sure to blow over, he said. After all, he had fought in the first World War, and his picture in uniform hung in a place of honor in our apartment along with his well-earned medals […] It was not until until Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938 […] that he believed the disaster so feared by others could actually happen.”
Despite the fact that Eduard was a German soldier during World War I, Ruth’s Jewish family was still subject to Nazi persecution. One year after Kristallnacht, Ruth and her family received visas and left Europe via Holland.
“There was one incident before we left Stuttgart which has become emblematic of my childhood in Germany. It occurred shortly before we left Stuttgart. I had been playing with four or five children outside our apartment building. One of the mothers came out and gave candy to the children. All of the other children were given two pieces, I only one. Why, I wondered aloud, did I get one piece when everyone else got two? The daughter of the woman who gave us candy said: ‘It’s because you are Jewish.'”
The family settled in New York in 1939. Ruth attended college and earned her Master’s Degree in social work. She later moved to Pittsburgh and became an Oakland Realtor. Ruth told her story told her story of surviving the Holocaust with others, spreading the message of love over hate.
Ruth was a member of the Tree of Life synagogue, but she was not present on the day of the Tree of Life shooting on October 27, 2018. Her husband, who is also a member, was warned by friends of the shooting and left the scene upon arrival.
“How could I […] have considered myself in the same category as people who had suffered anguish, pain and humiliation at the hands of the Nazis. I was never able to. I am only humble in the face of their suffering. Yet, how will we ever know the impact on a small child of such a devastation can be. At sixty-three years of age, I still wonder.”
Quotes are excerpted from “Flare of Memory: Childhood Stories Written by Holocaust Survivors”
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