Ruth Mermelstein

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Ruth Mermelstein was born Regina “Rella” Grunberger on 29 February 1928 in Mukačevo, Czechoslovakia, now Mukachevo, Ukraine. The third of eight children born to David and Emma Grunberger, she grew up in a religious Jewish household, supported by her father’s wholesale grocery business. After Hungary annexed the town in 1938, antisemitic restrictions increasingly disrupted the family’s life.

Following Germany’s occupation of Hungary in March 1944, Ruth and her family were confined in a brickworks used as a ghetto before being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. Sixteen-year-old Ruth survived the selection alongside her older sister, Manci. Their parents and six other siblings were murdered. The sisters’ determination to remain together became central to their survival through imprisonment, forced labour and the evacuations that followed.

At Auschwitz, Ruth worked in “Kanada,” where prisoners sorted belongings stolen from deported Jews. Her subsequent captivity included forced labour at Reichenbach and exhausting marches through the Sudeten Mountains. While working in a factory, she secretly collected metal fragments and fashioned a small comb. Although her head had been shaved, she kept it in the hope that she would one day have hair—and freedom—again. The comb later entered the collection of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.

Rescued near the Danish border in 1945, Ruth and Manci reached Sweden, where they began recovering. Relatives in Philadelphia helped them immigrate to the United States in April 1946. Ruth married fellow survivor Ernest Mermelstein on 1 February 1948, and they settled in Brooklyn, raising a daughter and two sons.