Actress and Holocaust survivor Ruth Posner dies at 96

Some studies into the likelihood of elderly Holocaust survivors to consider or attempt suicide confirm an increased rate of suicide attempts or what they term suicide ideation among this group. But many survivors, like Ruth Posner went on to forge successful careers in their future countries, raise families and make outstanding contributions to Holocaust education. Posner, herself, widely and unflinchingly reflected her Holocaust experiences to young people in her role as a prominent public speaker. She received a BEM in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to Holocaust education. The Campaign Against Antisemitism described her as influential in “educating future generations and never shying away from taking part in the fight against antisemitism.”

Sonja Linden voiced her sadness at Ruth’s death, praising her friend as “the most vibrant, amazing woman” and Michael as “ a remarkable, clever, intellectual man.” But her analysis differed from Pascal’s regarding coercive control. She told the PA: “..every time I visited her over the last year, she said ‘we’ve had enough we’re ready to go, we don’t want to just exist. And that’s what we’re doing, we’re just existing at the moment.’”

As Parliament considers a bill changing the law to allow assisted dying in England and Wales, Linden revealed that Ruth had been in favour of legalising assisted dying in England. “She wouldn’t have had to make those arrangements, had to travel, she could’ve said goodbye more publicly,” she said.

However, even if the bill passes, it is unlikely the Posners would have been eligible for it, since they were not considered terminally ill, nor expected to die within six months.

Ruth Wajsberg was born in Warsaw, the only child of assimilated Jewish parents, Anna and Marian. Her father was an artist and chartered accountant, and her mother an underwear designer and producer. Before the war the family moved to Radom, some 100 km from Warsaw . They regarded themselves as Polish first, and spoke without a Yiddish accent. But one day Ruth was shattered when her friends at her Catholic school accused her of killing Christ.

After the German invasion, Ruth was evicted from the family home and sent to the Radom Ghetto. Her father arranged for his daughter and her aunt Lola to work in a leather goods factory, whose location, 60 miles south of Warsaw, protected her from the deportations from the ghetto. During one of the weekly workers’ march to the town baths she and Lola escaped to the Aryan side of the road with fake documents provided by her father.

In her new identity as Irena Slabowska, Ruth lived with a Catholic family in Warsaw. She took part in the failed 1944 Warsaw Uprising and threw bottles at tanks. She was arrested and imprisoned in Germany as a Polish Catholic. As the Allies approached, Ruth and Lola were put on a train which was caught in a US bombing raid at Essen. The panicking German guards opened the doors and the two escaped, finding work at a local farm until the end of the war. “I peeled mountains of potatoes and learnt how to milk cows,” she wrote. When the Allied Forces came in search of German soldiers, she and Lola refused to reveal their hiding place in the attic. “They were only boys, we couldn’t betray them,” she said.

Ruth was 16 when she reached the UK, having refused to return home with Lola to an empty life without her parents. They and her entire family had been murdered, probably in Treblinka. She lived in a hostel run by two German Jewish refugees in Reading. She spoke no English at the time, but soon picked it up Kendrick School for Girls.

She then studied for three years at the London College of Dance and Drama. In 1950 she married Michael Posner, a chemist whose job at Unilever took them around the world. Their son, Jeremy, known as Jay, was born in New Zealand in 1961.

In the early 1970s the couple moved to New York, where Michael worked for Unicef. Ruth gained an MA in theatre arts at New York University’s Hunter College. But tragedy struck when Jay, a gifted musician, became addicted to heroin and died in 1998, aged 37. Having published her autobiography, Bits and Pieces of My Life in 2002,by 2012 she wrote a devastating account of her son’s troubles in My Son the Addict.

Ruth danced most of her life, saying she felt life through her dancing. But she ignored the discouragement of people who said she wouldn’t make the transition from dance to acting because of her thick Polish accent. She played several radio roles, some calling for East European accents. Looking back on her life, she would quip that her most convincing role was her real one: playing a Catholic girl escaping the Nazis during the Second World War.

She and Michael eventually settled in London, where she worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She appeared in the comedy film, Leon the Pig Farmer and had TV roles in The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, The Bill and Casualty. She played the Polish princess Katya in the BBC comedy series Count Arthur Strong and also appeared in several of Pascal’s plays, including Theresa, about the German occupation of Guernsey. She played an elderly Polish Jew in Pascal’s adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, and in 2014 she performed her own story at Southwark Playhouse in 2014 in Who Do We Think We Are?

Despite success in her chosen profession Ruth was plagued, like many with survivors’ guilt. She acknowledged she had been lucky but that others had also deserved the same luck and an equal right to live as she had done. Although described as frail she retained all her intellectual acuity, studying Italian and reading philosophy books.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of Holocaust Educational Trust, described Ruth as an “extraordinary woman…. one of a kind. Full of charisma and warmth, she left an impression on everyone she met.” Ruth Posner is survived by her grandson, Zach.

Ruth Posner: born April 20, 1929. Died September 26, 2025