Image – Wikimedia Commons: Pegasos Swiss Association Logo
Holocaust survivor Ruth Posner, aged 96, and her husband Michael, 97, have died together at an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland.
Mrs Posner, a Polish-born actress who escaped a Nazi ghetto as a child and later built a distinguished career in dance and drama, died last weekend at the Pegasos clinic near Basel. Her husband, a chemist who worked for UNICEF, died alongside her. The couple had been married for nearly 75 years.
Friends said they received an email from the couple shortly before their deaths. In it, the Posners explained their decision was mutual and made without outside pressure. They wrote that their faltering senses and lack of energy meant they no longer felt they were living, only existing; also admitting that the decision was made to avoid widowhood. They looked back on their lives with gratitude, although they grieved the loss of their son Jeremy.
However, some friends of the couple have raised troubling questions. They allege that Mr Posner was often coercive and overly controlling, and they wonder whether Ruth Posner truly wished to die in this way. These concerns shine a light on a wider problem that cannot be ignored: when assisted suicide is permitted there is no reliable safeguard against unearthed coercion. SPUC believes this case demonstrates perfectly that risk. The insecurity of proving coercion can never be legislated away.
Mrs Posner’s story was a remarkable one of survival. Much of her family were murdered in the Holocaust. She and one aunt were the only survivors. Sent to the Radom Ghetto, she managed to escape with the help of her father and later lived under a false identity. After imprisonment and further hiding, she reached Britain at the age of 16. She went on to dance with the London Contemporary Dance Theatre and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Her Belfast-born husband worked internationally with UNICEF before the couple settled in London. Friends remembered Mrs Posner as a remarkable woman of warmth and vitality, and Mr Posner as an intellectual giant.
The Holocaust Educational Trust paid tribute to Mrs Posner, noting her tireless commitment to educating young people about the dangers of antisemitism. She is remembered as a woman who turned survival into service, a memory sadly marred by her cause of death.
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