Ruth Guetzlaff

Born and brought up in Rotenburg, Ruth Guetzlaff-Katzenstein owed her survival in the Nazi period to the rescue operation of her non-Jewish mother who, in 1941, denied that her Jewish husband Siegfried Katzenstein was Ruth's biological father, and thus helped Ruth to secure an officially certified “Aryan” identity. Through a judicial decision Ruth was freed from the obligation to wear the discriminatory Star of David that was mandatory for Jews, and in this way escaped deportation to an extermination camp. Ruth’s Star of David is now displayed in a showcase in the Jewish Museum in the former mikvah in Rotenburg. It was for this reason that Ruth’s daughter Kathrin Reiher chose the title “Abschied vom Stern” (“Farewell to the Star”) for her account of her family's history, published in 2009 in the book, To Survive is to Remember: Life Stories of German Jews," edited by Wolfgang Herzberg.

http://www.hassia-judaica.de/Lebenswege/Deutsch/Katzenstein_Ruth/in...

• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: May 27 2017, 3:08:19 UTC