Ruth Holocaust Survivor Testimony
Ruth Glazberg Gold was born in 1930 in Czernowitz, Romania. She was just 11 years old when her world was destroyed by the Holocaust. As the Nazis and Einsatzgruppen advanced in 1941, Jews were murdered in the streets, and 50,000 Jews were forced into an overcrowded ghetto built for far fewer. Hunger, disease, and fear spread rapidly.
Soon after, deportations began. Ruth and her family were forced on a brutal march to Transnistria, in freezing conditions, for hours each day. Along the way, many died. In hiding, packed into a broken-down house with others, typhus spread quickly. Within weeks, Ruth lost her entire family—her parents and her brother. At 11, she was alone.
She would later say, “I don’t believe in miracles—but I am a miracle.”
Ruth survived for years in orphanages, refusing adoption and holding on to her independence. After the war, she was reunited with a surviving aunt and eventually made her way to British Mandate Palestine. After a shipwreck and months stranded in Cyprus, she met her future husband, Mendy.
They later settled in Israel, where Ruth became a nurse, before building a new life together in Colombia.
Ruth’s story is one of unimaginable loss—but also of strength, survival, and the will to live against all odds.
