Ruth Elias
Ruth Elias (née Huppert; Moravská Ostrava, October 6, 1922 – Beit Yitzhak, October 11, 2008) was a Czech-born Israeli writer and Holocaust survivor. Her post-war career was entirely dedicated to bearing witness to the Shoah. Her most celebrated work is the memoir *Hope Kept Me Alive* (original title: *Die Hoffnung erhielt mich am Leben*), published in 1988. In the volume, which has been translated into numerous languages, she describes her deportation to the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, where she managed to give birth and miraculously save her newborn daughter from the experiments of Josef Mengele. Her account has gained widespread international recognition, consolidating her role as a key witness to the horrors of Nazism. Her testimony was also documented in the 1999 German film *Fünf Kamine* (Five Chimneys), helping to preserve the memory of her extraordinary story of survival and resilience.
