After studying theology, August Ruf was ordained as a priest in 1893. He became town priest at the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Singen in 1905. Profoundly interested in social work, Ruf founded a number of charitable associations. In 1936 he was cautioned over “agitational speeches” against the Nazi state in his sermons. His permission to teach religion was revoked in March 1941.
In May 1942 Käte Lasker, a Jewish woman from Berlin living in hiding, asked him for help after failing to get into Switzerland of her own accord. Ruf turned to his former curate Eugen Weiler from the border community of Wiechs am Randen. With Weiler’s help, Lasker managed to enter Switzerland.
The Gestapo tracked down August Ruf in 1943. In October of that year, the Singen district court sentenced him to six months’ imprisonment for assisting an unauthorized border crossing. He died on April 8, 1944, a few days after the Freiburg Archiepiscopal Ordinariate had achieved his early release.
August Ruf and Eugen Weiler were honored posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem in 2004.