Ruth Foster (née Heilbronn) was born in 1923 in Lingen an der Ems, Germany, near the Dutch border. She was an only child. Her father was a cattle-dealer and fairly comfortably-off, and had been decorated during the First World War. Until 1933, Ruth had a happy childhood.  She had lots of friends and her family were integrated with the community.

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, her life suddenly changed. Her father’s business was damaged by boycotts. Antisemitic slogans appeared everywhere. At school, children were taught that the Jews were 'vermin' who had to be destroyed. Ruth had to transfer to a special Jewish school in distant Berlin. One day, her father was beaten so badly that he could never walk properly again. He was arrested on Kristallnacht, and released only because he was a war veteran. But Ruth’s father felt that there was no need to leave Germany, as things couldn’t get any worse.

In December 1941, on learning that her parents were about to be deported to Riga, Ruth immediately returned to Lingen to join them. On the three-day journey to Riga, the conditions were so horrific that people became seriously ill and even committed suicide. On arrival, they were marched in temperatures of minus 20 degrees to a ghetto formerly occupied by Latvian Jews who had all been killed. The elderly, disabled people and children were offered transportation; those who accepted were taken away and shot. 

In the ghetto, her father worked sawing wood, her mother repaired German uniforms, and Ruth worked as a Red Cross nurse. Brutality and death were part of everyday life. The Kommandant of the ghetto would often pick Jews randomly off the street and shoot them. Ruth’s father was shot in front of her after being caught with a piece of unrationed bread. Most of the ghetto’s Jews were shot in the Rumbula forest near Riga.  By late 1943, of the original 20,000 only 2,000 remained. 

In November, the Riga ghetto was liquidated. Those still fit for work, including Ruth and her mother, were transferred to the nearby Kaiserwald concentration camp. The rest were either sent to Auschwitz or shot on the spot.  Ruth’s mother was killed in 1944, when all Jews over 30 and under 18 were eliminated.  In July 1944, with the Russian forces approaching, the remaining prisoners were crowded into a ship’s cargo hold and transported through stormy weather to Danzig.  From there, they were marched to the Stutthof concentration camp where, on arrival, Ruth was sent to a gas chamber to be killed.  Fortunately the SS had run out of gas –'one of the miracles by which I survived'.

At Stutthof, Ruth narrowly avoiding being chosen as a guinea pig for medical experiments, but was assigned to heavy construction work in Milke, Pomerania. She was allowed to wash only in a freezing lake in the middle of winter. Anyone too sick to work was sent back to Stutthof to be killed.

In 1945, the 3,000 prisoners, including Ruth, were forced to march westwards.  Only 300 of them survived these 'death marches'. Ruth’s weight dropped to under 4 stone and she began to feel that 'life wasn’t worth living'. On the verge of giving up, Ruth was liberated in March 1945 by the Soviets, who nursed her back to health.

In 1946 Ruth married a Polish Jewish survivor who also had lost his whole family. The following year they settled in England.