Ruth Lustig, 1926 - 2025
Obituary Ruth Lustig (1926-2025)
Visitors of the Museum Lüneburg's permanent exhibition may remember the wonderful film about Ruth Lustig - and maybe also the following scene: In 2013, as an elderly lady who has been living in Israel for decades, she walks into a well-known Lüneburg pharmacy situated in the center of the town – just as she did as a child in the 1930s – and suddenly feels transported back in time. Instinctively, she is disappointed that she is not greeted as warmly as she was back then, when she used to visit the pharmacy as the dentist's young child: “I'm Ruth Marx, don't you recognize me?”
Ruth Lustig, née Marx, was born in Lüneburg in 1926. Her mother Tony's family had lived in Lüneburg since the 1860s, when Ruth's great-grandfather Theodor Philipp had come to the town as a young religious teacher. He was to stay for over 40 years, soon becoming the backbone and calming influence of the synagogue community, a confidant and chess partner of Marcus Heinemann, and the founder of a well-known Lüneburg family. His son, Ruth's grandfather Semmy Philipp, studied dentistry and then settled in the town of his childhood. Naturally, Semmy's daughter Tony also worked in the practice and married a dentist: Paul Marx, who moved to Lüneburg from southern Germany and became his father-in-law's junior partner. Things were going well at that time, the practice was growing and was very popular.
Ruth and her little sister Ellen were born, two cute, wide-eyed princesses who grew up in a large, modern house in a nice neighborhood. They had a carefree childhood, with frequent visits to the nearby spa gardens, happy children's birthdays and costume parties. In 1933, Ruth started elementary school. Only then did she realize that she came from a Jewish family – and that from now on she would be considered “different,” no longer belonging, shunned.
For Ruth Lustig, Lüneburg was the place of her fairy-tale childhood – and at the same time her first great pain. The Nazis mobilized against everything Jewish, not least against Jewish doctors. Ruth's parents were pressured into selling their house, they had to move in with the grandparents. The Philipp/Marx family reacted quickly, faster than many others, and left Nazi Germany in 1936 for Palestine. Dentists were needed there. Dr. Philipp and Dr. Marx were even able to take some of their equipment with them. Within a short time of their arrival, they managed to open a new practice, cramped into one room of their private apartment on Haifa's Mount Carmel. It was a hard break for the family; the generosity and ease of their Lüneburg life was over.
Semmy Philipp's wife Flora had died of a heart attack shortly before boarding the ship to Haifa, and the family had been forced to bury her in Hamburg under enormous pressure. Semmy's sister also remained behind in Hamburg with her husband and children; they were unable to emigrate and were later deported and killed.
In 1936, Ruth and her family faced difficult years of starting over in a foreign country. In Haifa, the adults had serious problems with the language, the climate, material restrictions, and concern for their relatives who were still in Germany. For ten-year-old Ruth, it was a profound change, but according to her own statements, it was also an adventure: she soon made friends, learned Hebrew without any problems, and after a while felt completely at home in Palestine and Israel. She worked in a dental clinic, married technician Dan Lustig, and had two sons with him.
In 1995, 50 years after the war, Ruth Lustig and her husband Dan were part of a group of Jewish people who accepted the town's invitation to visit Lüneburg. To commemorate this special event, Sibylle Bollgöhn published her book “Jewish Families in Lüneburg”, based on interviews and correspondences with survivors and relatives. In it, Ruth Lustig is quoted as saying: "You ask me what comes to mind when I think of Lüneburg. The answer will surely surprise you, or perhaps you won't be able to understand it: an old, beautiful city where I had a wonderful childhood. And that's precisely why I feel such anger that all this could have happened."
In the 2010s, the planners of the new Lüneburg museum decided that the permanent exhibition needed to tell the history of Jewish Lüneburgers. To this end, a short film was made about Ruth Lustig and her conflicting feelings about Lüneburg. Once more, she traveled to her hometown, this time together with her son Gideon.
It was to be her last visit. In 2018, at the age of 92, she would have liked to attend the inauguration of the synagogue memorial. But ultimately, she decided to send her two adult granddaughters instead. However, she was always there, if only electronically. From her retirement home in Haifa, Ruth Lustig accompanied and guided her granddaughters in Lüneburg. She directed them to the house of her childhood on Kefersteinstraße – and then, she insisted, over to the spa gardens, to the Graduation Tower, where they had to fill a bottle with Lüneburg salt water for their grandmother. All her life, she had longed for this taste of her childhood.
Ruth Lustig, née Marx, was one of the last contemporary witnesses of Lüneburg's pre-war Jewish community. We are very grateful to her for sharing her memories with us, and also her anger. On September 25, 2025, one day before her 99th birthday, she passed away in Haifa, mentally alert and full of humor until the very end. We will miss her.
(Anneke de Rudder, November 5, 2025)