Obituary | Ruth Weiss: Standing up against injustice

Until the very end, Ruth Weiss urged us not to remain silent in the face of injustice and violence, and not just to protest: "Remembering means acting" – the title of her last autobiographical book, co-authored with Lutz Kliche. "We must be active, do something concrete for people at risk!" – this was her conviction until her death.

On Friday, September 5, Ruth Weiss passed away in a hospital in Aalborg, Denmark. As she had wished, knowing full well that inevitable surgeries were imminent.

She spent her 101st birthday on July 26th at home with her son, surrounded by close friends who had traveled from various parts of the world, especially from Germany. She also spoke via video to guests at an exhibition in Tübingen, organized in her honor by René Böll, among others.

With her usual clarity, she said in one of several messages that day: "And that's what we must do... stand up against injustice, raise our voices against war, and protect marginalized people, regardless of our own advantages or disadvantages."

Her own life is a striking example of this: First, in 1936, as a 12-year-old child, she fled Nazi Germany with her parents from Fürth, Bavaria, to South Africa. Later, as a young journalist and a single mother at the time, she was forced to move countries several times after the apartheid government in Pretoria denaturalized her and rendered her stateless in 1966. After stints in Zambia and Zimbabwe, she finally received journalistic recognition in England and Germany and spent several years as head of the Africa department at Deutsche Welle in Cologne. She was not allowed to visit South Africa again until 1990—after Nelson Mandela's release.

In 2010, a secondary school in Aschaffenburg was named after Ruth Weiss. In Germany, she received the Federal Cross of Merit, First Class, in 2014, and in South Africa, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa personally presented her with the highest award that can be given to non-South Africans on April 27, 2023, National Freedom Day. Finally, in 2024, she was awarded the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Her public criticism of injustice, however and wherever she perceived it, remained constant. Even in the current "Gaza War," she clearly took a stand for a two-state solution: "Both peoples, the Jewish and the Arab-Palestinian, have the right to live in Palestine!"

According to her wishes, Ruth Weiss will be buried on September 15th in the Jewish cemetery in Münster.