Ruth Levinger

Ruth Levinger, born on January 20, 1908 in Munich, grew up with her younger brother Fritz in a beautiful house with a garden at Gaußstraße 3 in Munich-Bogenhausen. They lived a sheltered childhood. After attending the Gebeleschule, a primary school, she attended the Luisengymnasium. Ruth Levinger was a good pupil. Her 7th grade teacher described her as “very purposeful and independent in thought and action,” adding: “She is generally respected and popular and seems to have a social awareness.” Her outstanding graduation diploma was signed by school director Joseph Gebhard Himmler, father of the later Reichsführer SS (Reich Leader-SS) Heinrich Himmler. Ruth Levinger studied medicine and philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. On November 11, 1932 she was deregistered from the university and admitted to the Obersendling sanatorium for treatment of an acute illness. After the Nazi seizure of power, Ruth Levinger’s brother, Fritz, and their parents, Elisabeth and Siegfried Levinger, emigrated to Palestine. Ruth Levinger had to remain in Germany: her illness made her ineligible for the health certificates required for immigration. After stays in several clinics, she was transferred on February 8, 1939 to the sanatorium and nursing home Eglfing-Haar. During the Nazi period, Jewish psychiatric patients were doubly persecuted: as Jews, and as “mentally ill.” During the “special action against Jewish patients,” which commenced on April 15, 1940 on the orders of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, up to 2,500 people were murdered in 1940-1941, including Ruth Levinger. In the early morning hours of September 20, 1940 she and 190 other men, women and children were transferred to the Upper Austrian killing site Hartheim, near Linz. She was murdered there with carbon monoxide on the day of her arrival or soon afterward. (text Sibylle von Tiedemann, editor C. Fritsche, translation T. Axelrod)