By Dr Bea Lewkowicz OBE, Director, AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive
Last October I had the chance to interview the actress and Holocaust survivor Ruth Posner for the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive.
She had shared her story with thousands of school children and was slightly reluctant to be interviewed. However, once my camera man and I settled down in her beautiful living room in Belsize Park, she was very engaging and opened up about her history.
She told us about her childhood in Poland, her escape from Radom Ghetto, her assumed Christian identity and how she was sent to Germany, together with her aunt as Polish POWs. Towards the end of the war, they were both given shelter in a German farm. After her liberation she was helped to come to the UK by a British Jewish Squadron leader. She came to the UK by herself in 1946, without speaking a word of English, and was sent to a Hostel in Reading where she learnt English. She attended school and later enrolled in the London College of Dance and Drama, where she met her future husband Michael Posner, a chemist. Ruth built a career as a dancer, choreographer, and actress, performing internationally and later teaching at RADA and LAMDA.
Although Ruth had faced the loss of her parents and wider family in the Holocaust and later the loss of her son, aged 37, and she spoke about the limitation of her life as a 95-year-old, due to her limited mobility and energy, she radiated gratitude and positivity. She considered herself to have been ‘lucky in her unluckiness’ and the fact that she had a happy childhood and the experienced the love and support of her parents in her early life. When I asked her towards the end of the interview, what she enjoyed most in her life she replied:
‘Well, I enjoyed lots of things. I really did and I was very lucky that I was given the opportunity to do quite a lot of things. I have some regrets, now that I am sort of housebound, but that’s nature. And then, I meet people like you who are actually showing some interest. That’s incredible, too’.
I will be forever grateful that Ruth decided to share her story with the AJR Refugee Voices Archive, so that others can find out about Ruth’s life and her career, and the fate of her family and be inspired by her life story. Ruth’s career illustrates the great cultural impact of Continental actors, such as Andrew Sachs, and modern dancers, like Stella Mann, who was one of the first Refugee Voices interviewees, on British cultural life.
NOTES:
Ruth Posner (née Weisberg) was born on 20 April 1929 in Warsaw, Poland, and raised in Radom in what she called an “extremely happy” childhood. Her parents were secular but cultured: her father, an accountant who loved the arts, taught her that “choice has to be made out of knowledge and wisdom.” Her mother was a hardworking businesswoman with “a superb voice.” Ruth remembered a home of love, encouragement, and discipline, where she was never spoiled but always supported.
The Second World War changed everything. In 1939, her family was forced into the Radom ghetto. With the help of Catholic friends, her father obtained false papers for Ruth and her aunt Lola. She became Irena Slabowska, later saying, “Here was the first script that I had to learn.” Passing as Catholic, she recited prayers before strangers and described it as being “like going through some kind of play.” After imprisonment in Germany and a bombing raid near Essen, she and her aunt found refuge with German farmers until liberation. Her parents were deported and murdered in Treblinka, a fact she only confirmed many years later at the Wiener Library. She called that discovery “the greatest stain on humanity.”
In 1945, her fate shifted through chance. In a British compound, her aunt served breakfast to Squadron Leader Sidney Scott. When he revealed he was Jewish and searching for survivors, she confided, “You’re speaking to one.” Scott arranged for Ruth to travel to England, where she was placed in a hostel in Reading. There she learned English, studied at Kendrick School, and later attended the London College of Dance and Drama, where she met Michael Posner, her future husband.
Ruth built a career as a dancer, choreographer, and actress, performing internationally and later teaching at RADA and LAMDA. She also insisted on the complexity of her historical experiences: “Never generalise… don’t say all Jews are like that, or all Germans are like that.”
Reflecting on her long life, she emphasised both luck and resilience: “My life is full of coincidences.” And despite tragedy, she affirmed, “I am alive, so I must make the best of it.”
