Ruth Zellermayer grew up in a Jewish family in Berlin. After attending commercial college, she worked in her parents’ gentlemen’s hat store. The shop was vandalized by SA men in November 1938 and then “Aryanized.” Ruth married the dental technician Julius Wedel in 1939. Their son Gideon was born in March 1940.
On February 27, 1943, Ruth Wedel was sick at home and thus evaded the major raid on Jewish forced laborers (Operation Factory). Her husband also escaped arrest. However, when the Gestapo started looking for them the next day, they had to go into hiding. They spent several days in the home of the “half-Jewish” actor and singer Wilhelm Endtresser. He put them in touch with Emma Besser from Berlin-Köpenick, who initially took in Gideon Wedel and a few weeks later – presumably in June 1943 – also his parents. Besser told the neighbors and her husband the strangers were a bombed-out family from Düsseldorf.
Shortly before the end of the war, the Jewish family was taken in by the communist Willi Stiller and his wife, who lived nearby. Ruth Wedel gave birth to a daughter in September 1945. The family moved to West Berlin in 1960.