Tisha B’Av – Conversation with Holocaust Survivor Ruth Elenberg-Eisenberg

Ruth Elenberg Eisenberg (born Rachel Sygal Epstein in 1935 in Skalat, Poland) is a Holocaust survivor and volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. During the Nazi occupation, Ruth survived multiple Nazi actions and the liquidation of the Skalat ghetto by hiding in basements, barns, and forests, with the help of courageous non-Jewish rescuers, including the Baranofski and Szewchuk families.

Most of her family perished, but Ruth escaped with her siblings and members of the Sass family, eventually reaching a displaced persons camp in Italy. Ruth immigrated to the U.S. in 1947, where she built a new life, married fellow survivor Sidney Sass, and later Henry Eisenberg. In 2019, Yad Vashem honored her rescuers as Righteous Among the Nations.