Online Reporter
GENEVA. — Holocaust survivor Ruth Posner and her husband Michael, both aged in their 90s, have died at a suicide clinic in Switzerland.
The Polish-born actress, 96, who escaped a Nazi ghetto as a child and forged a successful career in dance and drama, is thought to have died last weekend at the Pegasos clinic near Basel.
She and 97-year-old Michael sent an email to family and friends on Tuesday informing them of their decision to die, according to playwright Sonja Linden who told BBC News she had received it.
In the note, first reported by The Times, the couple said they were “sorry not to have mentioned it, but when you receive this email we will have shuffled off this mortal coil”.
“The decision was mutual and without any outside pressure. We had lived a long life and together for almost 75 years. There came a point when failing senses, of sight and hearing and lack of energy was not living but existing that no care would improve,” they wrote.
“We had an interesting and varied life and except for the sorrow of losing Jeremy, our son. We enjoyed our time together, we tried not to regret the past, live in the present and not to expect too much from the future. Much love Ruth & Mike”.
Ms Linden, a close friend of Mrs Posner, paid tribute to her as “the most vibrant, amazing woman” and Mr Posner as a “remarkable, clever, intellectual man”.
Speaking to the PA news agency, she said of Mrs Posner: “She felt increasingly, every time I visited her over the last year, she said ‘we’ve had enough, we’re ready to go, we don’t want to just exist. And that’s what we’re doing, we’re just existing at the moment’.” — BBC
