Ruth Yost

Abstract

Ruth Yost was my first interview of a Mischling. She remains, even though she took her life, a woman who was very much alive and whose enthusiasm I will never forget. In contrast to the other women, Ruth was highly emotional, sometimes extreme in her passion, alternately venomous and tame. The splits in Ruth’s psyche (namely between a Jewish and a German identity) were highly pronounced and explain, in part, an ongoing battle to maintain her mental health. She cried numerous times when with me, which was painful to sit through, but she defied the German stereotype of being dispassionate and matter-of-fact. She said that after she and her father reunited, they cried for fifteen hours. Her hypersensitivity to intrusion and her mistrust of others was evident when her doorbell buzzed in the midst of the interview. She excused herself and went to her intercom. When no one answered, she shouted, panicked, over and over, into the intercom Wer ist da? Wer ist da? (Who’s there?) It took some time for her to calm down.

“I was born completely poisoned”