Ruth Barnett / Ruth Michaelis (F / Germany, 1935), Holocaust survivor
Ruth Barnett / Ruth Michaelis (F / Germany, 1935), Holocaust survivor
Martin Michaelis (M / Germany, 1932?), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Germany> <Kindertransport> <England> <Refugees>
- MEMOIRS : Person of No Nationality (2010)
Biography
- wiki.en -- [wiki.it]
Ruth Barnett was born January 23, 1935 in Berlin, Germany, to German citizens Robert Bernd Michaelis and Louise Marie Ventzke. Eight months later, under the Nuremberg Laws, she lost her German citizenship because her father was born Jewish. In 1939, at the age of four, she and her seven year old brother Martin travelled to Britain on a Kindertransport. Over the next ten years, Ruth and her brother lived with three foster families and in a hostel.
Ruth's father had escaped to Shanghai and her mother, who was not Jewish, remained in Germany. Her father returned from Shanghai in 1947/48.
While her brother went to Cambridge University to study Physics, in 1949 Ruth was repatriated to Germany against her will on a court order. She could not adjust to life in Germany and felt betrayed by her English foster mother who had let her go back to Germany.
She went back to England to study at the University of Reading, where she met Bernard Raymond Barnett; they married in 1958. After working as a chemist in industry and as a teacher, Barnett became a psychotherapist an a Holocaust educator.
Book : Person of No Nationality (2010)
- Ruth Barnett, Person of no nationality: a story of childhood loss and recovery (London: David Paul, 2010)