Watch the testimony of Ruth Mendel who talks about her first experiences as a refugee in Portugal, then read her short biography.
Ruth Mendel (née Facher) was born in 1931, in Luxembourg City, in a Jewish family. Her father Max Facher was a miner, while her mother, Helen Czolzynsky Facher worked in the family business of her parents. She studied at the local public school until the German occupation of Luxembourg in 1940. Together with her close family they decided to flee from Luxembourg with visas acquired by her mother from Belgium. Eventually, they were allowed to enter Portugal, so they were housed in Lisbon in a refugee home. In 1941, she emigrated to New York with her parents, her grandparents were transferred to Jamaica. Her parents opened a little business in New York where she occasionally helped. She met her husband in 1957, they have two daughters. Later on she worked at a local newspaper. Her interview was recorded in 1998, in Albany, New York.