Ruth Levinger lived with her parents and her brother Fritz in a large house with a garden in the middle-class district of Bogenhausen. She attended the Luisengymnasium and graduated with her Abitur. She then studied medicine at LMU. However, due to illness, she interrupted her studies in 1932 and was admitted to the Obersendling sanatorium.
After the Nazis came to power, her parents emigrated to Palestine with their son Fritz. Due to her illness, Ruth Levinger was unable to provide the health certificates required for emigration. She had to remain in Germany.
After stays in various institutions, she was deported on 20 September 1940, together with 190 other men, women and children, to the Hartheim killing centre near Linz in Upper Austria. There, Ruth Levinger was murdered with carbon monoxide as part of the ‘special action against Jewish institutional patients’ launched on 15 April 1940 on the instructions of the Reich Ministry of the Interior.