Ruth F. Lansing, 105, translator at Nuremberg Trials, witness to Nazi violence

Ruth F. Lansing, who escaped the horrors of Nazi violence against Jews in Germany just before World War II, then waited for 10 years to come to the US, died April 5 in Canterbury Woods, Amherst. She was 105.

Born Ruth Friede Oberlander in Odenkirchen, a small town near Cologne, Germany, where her father owned a clothing factory, she was one of three girls. She was forced by the Nazis to leave school when she was 16. Two years later, preparing to emigrate to British-ruled Palestine, she spent six months in Denmark, learning farming skills she thought she would need.

In November 1938, while she was visiting in Dusseldorf, Germany, she witnessed the Nazi rampage on Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when Jews throughout Germany were attacked and their homes, businesses and synagogues were vandalized.

Part of a mob broke into the apartment of the family with whom she was staying and threw everything out through a broken window – furniture, crystalware, clothing, even a piano. When she went down to the street to see what could be salvaged, a cursing mob chased her back into the building.

“Two storm troopers came to arrest my host,” she told a gathering for Yom Hashoah, the day of remembrance of the Holocaust, in 1988. “The way they acted, I believed they were going to shoot him then and there.”

Her sister Lucy and her husband were able to come to the US shortly after that, but a quota on immigration kept her from following. A cousin in England she had never met got her a permit to work as a domestic servant in London. She was a live-in maid for two years, withstood German bombing, which later gave her nightmares, and was a waitress. Her parents stayed in Germany and perished later in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, as did an older sister, Gerti, who thought she had been safe living in the Netherlands.

After the war, Mrs. Lansing applied to join her sister Lucy, but had to wait three years until her quota number came up. In the meantime, she returned to occupied Germany and became a civilian employee of the US Army, first in censorship, then as a translator at the Nuremburg Trials of Nazi war criminals.

She planned to go to the West Coast when she finally immigrated to the US in 1948, but while visiting her sister in Buffalo, she met her future husband, Eric E. Lansing. A certified public accountant, he had fled Germany in the 1930s and fought against the Nazis in the war. They were married in 1949.

A longtime resident of Kenmore and the Town of Tonawanda, she worked for 20 years as a real estate agent for Olive E. Smith Realtors and Kader Realty.

In 1955, she and her husband were among the founding members of the Suburban Congregation, which later became Temple Beth Am and now is Congregation Shir Shalom in Amherst.

For many years, she volunteered for Meals on Wheels, Kenmore Mercy Hospital, Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital and the Temple Beth Am Sisterhood. For the SPCA Serving Erie County, she took puppies to visit nursing homes.

She traveled extensively, visiting six continents and 53 nations. She was an avid tennis player until she was 91, continued swimming until she was 100 and enjoyed playing duplicate bridge.

On the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht in 2018, she gave eyewitness accounts to The Buffalo News and the BBC. She also gave an oral account of her experiences of ella to Buffalo’s Holocaust Resource Center and recalled her role of ella in the Nuremberg Trials on video for the Robert H. Jackson Center.

Asked by the BBC interviewer in 2018 if she had a message to give on her 100th birthday, she said: “We only have one life, so why not choose to make the world a better place. “I think we would be a lot better off if we looked at our similarities, instead of focusing on our differences.”

Surviving are a daughter, Diane Lansing; son, Tom; two grandchildren and several nieces and a nephew. Her husband died in 2014.

A memorial service will be held at 11 am Wednesday, April 17 at Congregation Shir Shalom, 4660 Sheridan Drive, Amherst. It will also be live streamed on the Shir Shalom Facebook page and YouTube channel.