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Ruth Elenberg Eisenberg

Born: April 15, 1935, Skałat, Poland

Ruth Elenberg Eisenberg was born Rachel Sygal Epstein on April 15, 1935 in Skałat, Poland (today Skalat, Ukraine). Her father Hersch owned a tannery, and her mother Fayga was a homemaker. Ruth had 5 older siblings, Yitzhak, Malka, Szamo, Miriam, and Bronia. Skałat was home to a large, mostly orthodox Jewish population. Ruth eagerly anticipated Shabbat each week, a day she celebrated with family.  

In September 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland, splitting the country between themselves in accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Skałat, which was located in eastern Galicia, fell under Soviet occupation.

Then, in June 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and invaded Soviet-occupied Poland. The next month, the Germans occupied Skałat, and instituted anti-Jewish restrictions. They required Jews to wear white armbands with the Star of David and to perform forced labor. Ruth, then six, could not begin school due to the occupation. Nazi authorities confiscated Hersch’s business in 1942. The family was permitted to stay in their house but fearing violence, they converted their basement into a hiding place.      

In October 1942, SS officers carried out an “Aktion” (or operation) in Skałat, attacking and rounding up Jews. When the Aktion began, Ruth’s family hid in a basement with their friends, the Sass family. As the SS encircled the home, Ruth’s older sister Malka was unable to prevent her baby from crying. Two of the Sass brothers and Ruth’s brother Yitzhak knocked down a brick wall to the outside of the basement, and members of both families escaped. Ruth and her mother ran into a barn and hid in a barrel. However, Malka and her baby, and Ruth’s sister Miriam, as well as her father Hersch were caught. Hersch was sent to the Janowska labor camp in Lwów, where he died. The rest were taken to the Belzec killing center, where they were likely killed upon arrival. Afterwards, the Germans established a closed ghetto in Skałat.

The SS and their collaborators liquidated the Skałat ghetto on June 9, 1943, killing hundreds of Jews who remained in the ghetto. Ruth and the remaining members of the Sygal Epstein and Sass families hid in the basement hiding place below the Sygal Epstein’s house. Although the officers stuck bayonets through the floor, injuring one of the Sass boys, they were unable to find the two families below.

Following the liquidation, it was not safe for the family to remain in Skałat, which the Germans had declared “free of Jews.” Ruth’s older sister, Bronia, was sent to the local labor camp, and she covertly brought Ruth inside. Ruth hid in a bed under the mattress to avoid detection. That night, Marko Baranofski, a non-Jewish friend of the Sass’, smuggled Ruth out of the camp. Bronia joined her later. Ruth, her family, and friends hid in the Baranofskis’ attic for a short time. But, when the neighbors grew suspicious, they had to leave. Yitzhak and two of the Sass brothers left to locate a hiding place in the forest. Ruth and the others laid in trenches in the Baranofskis’ potato field for a day, awaiting the men’s return. Her mother, Fayga, was too weak to make it to the forest and remained in the field where she ultimately died. 

In December 1943, after three months in the forest, one of the Sass boys arranged for Ruth, Bronia, and the Sass women to hide with the Szewchuks, a Ukrainian family from a nearby village. They agreed to hide them even though Mr. Szewchuk was a member of the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) a Ukrainian nationalist force known to commit violence against Jews and Poles. Yitzhak was killed during a bombing towards the end of the war. 

In March 1944, Soviet troops occupied the region and liberated the remaining members of the Sygal Epstein and Sass families. Ruth and Bronia returned to Skałat and reunited with their brother Szamo. The siblings left Skałat, eventually arriving at a displaced persons camp in Cremona, Italy in the fall of 1945. From the displaced persons camp, they contacted their uncle Charlie Siegel who had immigrated to the United States, and he helped them leave Europe.

Ruth arrived in Hoboken, New Jersey on September 24, 1947, and she lived with relatives and attended school until her brother and sister arrived from Cremona. In 1953, Ruth married Sidney Sass, and they had two children. All three surviving Sygal Epstein siblings married a member of the Sass family. After Sidney’s death, Ruth remarried another survivor Henry Eisenberg. In 2019, Yad Vashem recognized the Baranofskis as Righteous Among the Nations. Today Ruth is a volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.