Holocaust Survivor to Speak at Beaumont Library on April 12

Ruth Lindemann, a speaker from the Tolerance Education Center in Rancho Mirage, will talk about surviving two years under the Nazis as a child before escaping to America.

Her appearance will take place on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Beaumont Library's Laura May Stewart Meeting Room at 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 12.

Lindemann was born Ruth Kohn in Vienna, Austria February 15, 1933. She had her last childhood birthday party at 5 years of age before the “troubles” began.

That March, Austria was taken over by Germany. By April, Jews were forbidden from using parks and public benches. That summer she was sent to live with her grandmother in the country and by then the Austrian people could not do business with Jews and Jews were not allowed to use street cars.

When she went back home that fall, all of the Jewish men were arrested and taken away on trains to Dachau on November 10, 1938, during Kristallnacht, when the glass windows of Jewish businesses were broken overnight and the buildings burned.

By early 1939, her family was visited by the Gestapo and she and her mother were forced to leave their home and move into the Jewish ghetto where they lived in terrible conditions for the next two years.

Her mother wrote to relatives in America and they finally got paperwork allowing them to go to the United States. She was also able to sell furniture to get the father out of Dachau and into safety in Sweden.

Before leaving for the U.S., her mother took Ruth to visit her grandmother one last time in May 1940. They miraculously escaped capture by hiding when the Nazis arrived and took away her grandmother, great aunt, aunt, uncle and cousins.

Ruth and her mother arrived in NY and then spent time in Maryland on a chicken ranch before relocating to Washington, DC where her mother cleaned houses. Later her father got permission to come to the U.S. and the family moved to Portland, OR and later settled in Longview, WA.

In addition to telling her story, Mrs. Lindemann will also discuss her book, To Survive Is Not Enough, a novel based on dozens of true stories set within the historical context of World War II.

Beaumont Library, a California Special District independent of both city and county government, provides library services to Beaumont and Cherry Valley and is located at 125 E. Eighth Street in Beaumont. Call 951-845-1357 or visit bld.lib.ca.us for more information.