Rut Wermuth

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Rut Wermuth-Burak (1 January 1928 – 24 April 2021) was a Polish survivor of the Nazi Holocaust, whose life story was published in Polish as "Spotkałam Ludzi" ("Encounters with the Decent") in 2002, and in English as "Leap for Life" in 2010.

Reunion Wermuth found out during the war that her mother had died – possibly from illness but probably because she was discovered by the German occupiers in Poland. After the war, she searched for the only remaining member of her family who might still be alive, her older brother Salek. Her search was complicated by the fact that she did not remember his full name, or birth date.

Through a series of meetings and correspondence with friends in New York and Israel, she discovered that Salek had also survived the war, and gone on to be a respected journalist and commentator. Like Rut, he had taken an assumed name during the war, Victor Zorza, and had settled in England, where he wrote for The Guardian newspaper, and was famous for having an uncanny understanding of the inner workings of the Kremlin. In 1994 after 53 years apart, they were reunited, first over the telephone, and then as Rut visited Victor in England.

Author Wermuth wrote her memoirs, and in September 1999, the Polish version of "Spotkałam ludzi" ("Encounters with the Decent") The memoirs were also published in German in 2006, and Wermuth has spoken to many schoolchildren in Germany and Poland about her experiences.

An English translation of the book under the title Leap for Life was published in 2010.