Ruth Rosa Jacobsohn

"My cousin, Ruth Jacobsohn, was determined to finish the medical degree she had started shortly before the takeover. "¹ With these words, Ruth Ehrlich described her cousin's commitment to studying and becoming a doctor.

Ruth Rosa ^Jacobsohn2 was born in Berlin on 20 August 1912. Her father, Siegfried Jacobsohn, owned a department store in Niedersch?nhausen^,3 in the same district where the family lived at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Stra?e 5^.4 Siegfried Jacobsohn and his wife C?cilie (née Ehrlich) had three children: Ruth, the eldest, as well as Arno and Gerda.

As a child, Ruth Jacobsohn attended a public school in Niedersch?nhausen and later the Elisabeth-Christinen-Lyzeum. After graduating from the lyceum, she went to the Oberlyzeum in Berlin-Pankow^,5 which is now called the Carl-von-Ossietzky-Gymnasium, until around 1931. During her youth, she joined the Jewish Liberal Youth League^.6

After graduating from the Oberlyzeum, Ruth Jacobsohn began studying medicine at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universit?t Berlin in 1931. She passed the Physikum, but then had to interrupt her studies due to the National Socialist measures against Jewish students^.7 As her father had fought as a volunteer soldier on the front during the First World War, she was able to continue her studies at Leipzig University^,8 where she was enrolled in the winter semester of 1936/1937 and the summer semester of 1937^.9

In the end, Ruth Jacobsohn was not allowed to take the final examination for her medical degree. She returned to Berlin and worked as a nurse at the Jewish Hospital in Iranische Stra?e from around 1938 until shortly before her deportation^.10

When her father had to give up his business, the Jacobsohn family moved in with her father's sister, Bertha, and her husband, Ignatz Engl?nder. The Engl?nder couple lived at Barbarossaplatz 3, where they owned the "Bavaria" pastry shop. Arno Jacobsohn worked there as a cook and confectioner^.11

The father was arrested and deported shortly after the move. In the summer of 1941, the family received the news that he had been shot during an escape attempt in Buchenwald on 10 July 1941. They received an urn with his ashes and arranged for it to be buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Wei?ensee^.12

As her sister, Gerda Jacobsohn, had already emigrated to Palestine in the mid-1930s, only Ruth Jacobsohn, her mother and her brother remained in Berlin after their father's deportation. However, they were unable to escape their cruel fate. The mother was the first to be deported to Riga on 5 September 1942, where she was murdered three days later. The Jacobsohn siblings were also deported to Riga shortly afterwards, on 26 October 1942, and murdered on 29 October 1942^.13

As part of the exhibition "Jewish Life in Pankow", Ruth Israeliski, an acquaintance of the Jacobsohn family, said that Ruth Jacobsohn tied her medical instruments around her waist with a belt before her deportation in the hope that she would be able to practise her profession again after the deportation^.14