Try to Remember—Never Forget

Memoirs of Holocaust Survivor Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax

Meet Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax. She is standing next to the dress that my grandmother wore during the time she was in Oederan. She never took it off, and every week she would bend over and the Nazis would paint an X and stripe down her backside. The dress was initially given to her in Auschwitz. Ruth Goldschmiedova Saxs life story begins in Moravia in 1928, where she lived comfortably as an only child with her parents. At the age of eleven, the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, and life changed for everyone. By 1941, the family found themselves getting off a transport train in Theresienstadt, where Ruth was forced to grow up quickly. She was shaved to prevent lice infestation, her feet were wrapped in paper to keep them warm in the winter, and she witnessed the deaths of many. Separated from her father, she survived awful circumstances, only to be sent to Auschwitz in 1944, where she faced Dr. Mengele half a dozen times. Finally, with G-ds help and liberation, she was reunited in 1945 with her mother and father, a miracle within itself. Ruth later immigrated to America, where she married Kurt Sax, whom she had met at age seven. This memoir narrates the dramatic life circumstances that led her from her birthplace in central Czechoslovakia to three concentration camps and finally to her home in America. Future plans are to find a museum for this dress so that it can be displayed accordingly for all to see and to remind us to never forget.