Ruth Michel was born as Ruth Rosenstock in Königsberg in 1928. In 1941 she experienced the invasion of the Wehrmacht in the then Polish Mikuliczyn. After her Jewish father was forced to hide, she took care of the family. Ruth escaped the mass shooting in the woods where her father was murdered. Disguised as a Polish forced laborer, she fled with her Christian mother back to Königsberg, where she witnessed the end of the war.