Ruth Weiss, who chronicled Apartheid after fleeing the Nazis, dies at 101

Ruth Weiss, a South African writer forged by the Nazi persecution she experienced arsenic a kid successful Germany, who covered the malignant flowering of apartheid successful the aboriginal 1960s and aboriginal wrote astir the brutal white authorities successful Rhodesia earlier being expelled from the country, died Sept. 5 astatine a infirmary successful Aalborg, Denmark. She was 101.

Her decease was announced by the nonprofit enactment Ruth Weiss Gesellschaft, founded successful Germany by Weiss’ friends to beforehand her work.

Her agelong beingness and the hundreds of articles and galore books she wrote were shaped by twin experiences of discrimination: first, arsenic a girl, when her beingness was upended aft the Nazis came to powerfulness successful 1933, and then three years later, when her household immigrated to Johannesburg connected 1 of the past exile boats allowed into South Africa.

From being an entity of exclusion and persecution, she became a witness to it. And similar galore different exile Jews, she became a determined hostile of apartheid.

“Blacks under apartheid – Jews under the swastika. Was it each that different?” she asked successful a lecture successful Nuremberg, Germany, successful 1979, arsenic she recounted successful her 2014 memoir, “A Path Through Hard Grass: A Journalist’s Memories of Exile and Apartheid.”

She concluded that it was not. Her discursive memoir is changeable done with repugnance astatine the brutal treatment of Black radical that she witnessed arsenic a young woman successful her adopted land.

Her person Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Prize-winning South African novelist, lauded Weiss’ “natural modesty” successful the instauration she wrote to the memoir.

It was that self-effacing quality, paradoxically, that launched Weiss’ vocation successful journalism: her willingness to write connected behalf of someone else.

During the 1950s successful Johannesburg, she was joined to a fellow-refugee writer named Hans Weiss, who though a analogous for German newspapers was often unable to work arsenic helium suffered from slump and different illnesses.

Weiss wrote some of his articles for him, under his sanction – initially the ones dealing with economics, arsenic she had worked for a ample South African security institution – and, successful the process, she became a journalist.

She besides took implicit his different writer work, she wrote successful her memoir. “This became the signifier of our lives.”

When their matrimony began to laminitis successful the aboriginal 1960s, she blossomed arsenic a writer – but present under her ain name. She became the concern exertion of the fortnightly South African mag News Check, and aboriginal a analogous for the country’s starring concern weekly, Financial Mail. She accepted overseas assignments for some publications, traveling passim Africa and Europe.

“It was an breathtaking and engaged clip for the media,” she wrote. “We covered the emergence of MK” – the subject wing of the African National Congress, the oldest liberation question successful Africa – “the arrests and detentions, and the government’s determination to permission the Commonwealth and turn South Africa into a republic connected 31 May 1961.”

But the pressures connected Weiss and her wide friends were intense. “I ne'er parked successful beforehand of definite houses,” she wrote, referring to the houses under surveillance by the Special Branch, South Africa’s concealed police. “Telephone calls were kept abbreviated and to the point. The multiracial parties of the fifties were a happening of the past.”

She recalled gathering Nelson Mandela.

“I was having meal astatine a friend’s location when her navigator came successful and whispered something to her,” Weiss wrote. “She excused herself and returned a fewer minutes later, asking if I could assistance her successful the kitchen. A ample antheral was sitting astatine the table, enjoying a sheet of soup. He smiled astatine us. Nelson Mandela. At that clip helium was connected the run.”

Through it each – adjacent earlier she began working arsenic a writer – her hatred of apartheid was unwavering. “I don’t similar your system,” she told her astonished leader astatine the security company, a nationalist Afrikaner named Chris Bischoff. “I think it’s unjust and indispensable beryllium abolished.”

In 1966, aft the commencement of her son, she was offered a occupation by the Financial Mail arsenic bureau main successful Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). With the situation successful South Africa increasing progressively untenable, she eagerly accepted. But she σύντομα ran afoul of the authorities there – and of Prime Minister Ian Smith, who had declared the country’s independency from Britain – by reporting connected its strenuous efforts to evade crippling United Nations-imposed sanctions.

By 1968, she was surviving successful London and had taken a occupation astatine The Guardian newspaper. “I was not allowed to instrumentality to Rhodesia nor so to South Africa,” she wrote. “I received the bid forbidding my introduction with the menace of instant apprehension if I arsenic overmuch arsenic acceptable a ft connected Rhodesian soil while I was working astatine The Guardian.”

Still, the determination to write astir the sanctions evasion had been an casual one, erstwhile she received the extremity from respective businesspeople, though she knew it would mean the extremity of her clip successful the country, and of a occupation successful which she had thrived for two years.

“As an economical journalist, I could not simply fto it go,” she wrote. “I had to find retired what was happening.”

Ruth Löwenthal was calved connected July 26, 1924, successful Fürth, Germany, the younger of two daughters of Richard Löwenthal, who worked successful the toy manufacture successful adjacent Nuremberg, and Selma (Cohen) Löwenthal. (One of her sister Margot’s classmates astatine the town’s Israelitische Realschule was a definite Heinz, aboriginal known arsenic Henry Kissinger.)

In 1933, when the Nazis took power, Ruth’s idyllic puerility ended. “I nary longer had immoderate friends,” she wrote. “Everyone sat arsenic acold distant from maine arsenic possible. During the break, nary 1 came adjacent me.”

After her begetter mislaid his job, relatives successful South Africa invited him to immigrate. The household joined him successful Johannesburg three years later. “We had the close skin color, adjacent if we had the wrong religion,” she told an interviewer for the German nationalist broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

Ruth graduated from Parktown High School for Girls successful 1939. Her begetter ran a small market store, and her parents could not spend to nonstop her to college. Instead, she joined the youth radical of the Independent Jewish Cultural Association, where she met Hans Weiss. That was “my university,” she told the German paper Die Zeit past year.

She worked for the bookstore Weiss owned, and then for a instrumentality steadfast and successful the security industry, where she became a institution caput and held positions of expanding responsibility.

After her stint astatine The Guardian successful London, Ruth Weiss returned to Africa successful 1970 arsenic concern exertion of The Times of Zambia. Five years later, she moved to Germany to service arsenic the Africa adept astatine Deutsche Welle, successful Cologne. By the precocious 1970s, she was backmost successful London, working arsenic a freelance journalist. She went connected to train journalists successful the recently autarkic Zimbabwe successful the 1980s, where she witnessed Robert Mugabe’s emergence to power, archetypal arsenic premier curate and aboriginal arsenic president. She besides helped recovered the Zimbabwe Institute of Southern Africa, a treatment forum intended to assistance hole the state for the extremity of apartheid that met astatine Cold Comfort Farm, a workplace extracurricular Harare.

Weiss spent overmuch of the 1990s surviving connected the Isle of Wight successful England, where she wrote novels, children’s books and nonfiction. Among her books translated into English are “Zimbabwe and the New Elite” (1994); “Sir Garfield Todd and the Making of Zimbabwe” (1999), written with Jane Parpart; and “Peace successful their Time: the Peace Process successful Northern Ireland and Southern Africa” (2000).

In her last decades, Weiss was successful large request arsenic a lecturer successful Germany due to the fact that of her relation arsenic a so-called Zeitzeugin, oregon witness to history.

She and Hans Weiss divorced successful the 1960s. She is survived by their son, Alexander, whom she joined successful Aalborg successful 2015, and a grandson.

In the instauration that Gordimer wrote for “A Path Through Hard Grass,” she praised Ruth Weiss’ “innovative intelligence, governmental acumen and courageousness to take risks.”

Weiss, she wrote, was “the astir humane woman I person ever met.”

Addressing the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia successful Germany successful 2023, Weiss said: “Racism, antisemitism and misanthropy cognize nary borders. These are injustices that indispensable beryllium fought everywhere.”

This nonfiction primitively appeared successful The New York Times.