The story of Dr. Baruch Ravid

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Cousins Baruch Ravid and Ruth Neumann meet after 58 years

Dr. Baruch Ravid (Redlinger), a retired engineer from Rehovot, and Holocaust survivor from Slovakia recently found his cousin, Ruth Neumann (Schmelz), after not having had any contact with her for 58 years.  They finally met about a month ago in her home in Germany.  Ravid found his cousin as a result of a simple search in the Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names, which was uploaded onto the Internet less than two months ago.

When the database went up at the end of November, Dr. Ravid punched in the name “Redlinger”- his family name before he Hebraized it.  59 names appeared, the first one being that of his father’s sister, Irma Schmelz. Ravid called up her Page of Testimony, and discovered that it had been filled out four years earlier by his cousin, Ruth Neumann, Irma Schmelz’s daughter.  The Page also contained her address in Ruesselsheim, Germany, and Ravid immediately wrote her a letter.  A few days later, on 30 November, he received a telephone call from Ruth, and on Saturday night, 4 December, Dr. Baruch Ravid and his wife Aviva were already in Ruesselsheim.

The Story in Full

Top right: Baruch’s father, Eugen (Yehuda) Redlinger Top left: Baruch’s aunt and Ruth Neumann’s mother, Irma Schmelz

Baruch’s father, Eugen (Yehuda) Redlinger, was born into a family that had lived in the Slovak capital of Bratislava for many generations.  When the persecution of the Jews began, the Redlinger family were forced to leave their apartment and move to Zidovska Street.  Baruch was six years old at the time, and vaguely remembers that he moved in with his aunt, Irma Schmelz.  After a while, the family had to move again, this time to an outlying town.

In March 1942, his father was taken on one of the first transports to the Majdanek extermination camp, where he perished. Baruch and his mother, Rachel (Priska) Redlinger wandered through different places in Slovakia, and were in hiding part of the time. Katerina Hrubesova, the peasant woman who hid them in the last months of the war, was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.

After the war, Baruch and his mother returned to Bratislava, but were unable to find even one survivor from his father’s family.  In 1947, Baruch’s cousin Ruth Schmelz, Irma’s daughter, returned to Bratislava.  It transpired that Ruth, her brother Alex and her sister Judith, had been sent to an uncle in Brussels before the war broke out.  When the Germans invaded Belgium, Ruth went to England together with the family she’d been living with, and was educated in the school set up by the Free Czech Army.  Alex and Judith were hidden by local families, and moved to Australia after the war. In 1947, Ruth and Rachel (Baruch’s mother) were photographed in front of a monument to local musician Dr. Kolisek, located in one of the city squares.  Thanks to this photograph, which acquired special significance over the years, Ruth was not forgotten by her extended family. She married Robert Neumann, a Jewish pediatrician, and they lived in the Tatri mountains in Northern Slovakia.  At that point, all contact with her was lost.  In 1989, Baruch, his wife and their three daughters went on a roots trip to the Slovak Republic.  When they found the statue of Dr. Kolisek, the girls asked to be photographed in the same place as their late grandmother and Ruth had been photographed in 1947.

The Pages of Testimony that Baruch Ravid and Ruth Neumann filled out in memory of their parents (click to enlarge)

When the Database was uploaded onto the Internet at the end of November, Baruch immediately started searching for names of his family members on the site.  The story gathered momentum from there, and about two weeks later, Baruch and his wife were already in Germany meeting up with Ruth Neumann and her family.  The reunion was extraordinarily moving:

“….for the next three days, we just sat and talked, trying to fill the 60-year gap, as well as piecing together memories from before the war. From the very first moment there was chemistry between us, and we felt no awkwardness.  I felt as though I had found a sister, the only living remnant of my father’s family.”

Baruch Ravid and Ruth Neumann light Chanuka candles in Neumann’s home in Ruesselsheim, Germany - December 2004