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So, let's get this straight. You survive the Holocaust. You watch the world burn, see your... So, let's get this straight. You survive the Holocaust. You watch the world burn, see your family murdered, and somehow crawl out of the ashes of the Warsaw Ghetto. You build a whole new life, become a dancer, an actress, find a partner you stick with for nearly 75 years. And after all that, you end it on a Tuesday, with an email.
The email.
“When you receive this email we will have shuffled off this mortal coil.”
It sounds like a line from a play, doesn't it? A bit of Shakespearean flair for the final curtain call. It’s a very clean, very British, very… managed way of saying you’ve booked a one-way ticket to a Swiss clinic to be professionally ended. Ruth and Michael Posner, 96 and 97, weren't terminally ill. They just decided the show was over. Their email said their "failing senses, of sight and hearing and lack of energy was not living but existing."
And just like that, the narrative is set. This isn’t a tragedy. It’s a choice. An act of ultimate control from two people who had seen the absolute worst of what happens when you have none.
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I keep getting stuck on the dissonance of it all. This is Ruth Posner we’re talking about. A woman who escaped the Radom Ghetto with her father's help, who hid with a Catholic family, who got arrested as a Polish Catholic after the Warsaw Uprising, who then hid on a farm until the war was over. She survived the actual, literal Nazis, only to decide that old age in a comfortable London flat was the unbearable part. And I'm supposed to just nod along and…
The story we’re being sold is one of empowerment. Of agency. She survived everything the 20th century could throw at her, and she got to write her own ending. It’s a neat, tidy story for the 21st century. No, 'neat' isn't the word—it's sterile. It’s an Instagram-filtered version of death, packaged with a poignant quote and mutual consent. It’s the kind of story that lets us all feel vaguely progressive about the whole thing.
A close friend, a playwright named Sonja Linden, said she "completely endorses" their decision. She called Ruth "the most vibrant, amazing woman." And I don't doubt she was. But does "endorsing" the decision mean we don't get to feel horrified by it? Does it mean we can’t ask what it says about the world we've built that a woman who clung to life so fiercely for so long eventually looked at what was left and said, "No, thanks"?
This isn't some abstract debate. This is a woman whose parents were murdered, who lost almost everyone, who fled to a new country at 16 and still managed to join the Royal Shakespeare Company. That kind of resilience ain't normal. It’s forged in fire. And for that fire to finally go out, not in a hospital bed surrounded by beeping machines, but by appointment? It feels… wrong. It feels like a punchline to a joke I don't get.
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The Holocaust Memorial Trust, offcourse, had to weigh in. They called her "an extraordinary woman" and "one of a kind." Their chief executive praised her for making it her "mission to speak to as many young people as possible." The Campaign Against Antisemitism said she was influential in "educating future generations."
It's all true. It's also all PR.
It’s the same carefully curated language we see everywhere. It’s the corporate-speak of remembrance. We file down the jagged edges of a person's life and death until it’s a smooth, palatable tribute. We talk about their "mission" and their "legacy" because it’s easier than talking about the quiet despair of being 96 years old and unable to hear the world around you. It’s easier than confronting the reality that two people who had been together for three-quarters of a century decided to check out together because "existing" just wasn’t cutting it anymore.
This is what we do now. We rebrand everything. A corporate layoff is a "right-sizing." A stock market crash is a "market correction." And a double suicide at a Swiss clinic becomes a "brave, personal choice." Give me a break. It's all just language designed to make us feel better about things that are fundamentally terrible. It reminds me of those awful automated replies you get from customer service—"We understand your frustration." No, you don't. You're a script. And these tributes, as well-meaning as they are, feel like a script.
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Here's the part that really gets me. Michael Posner was a chemist. He worked for Unicef. A man of science, a man who worked for a UN agency dedicated to helping children. He and Ruth lost their own son, Jeremy. I can't find many details about that, the facts are scarce, but you don't have to be a genius to imagine the weight of that loss, carried for decades.
They saw it all. The worst of humanity and the best of it. They dedicated their lives to art, to science, to aid, to remembering. They did everything you’re supposed to do. They fought, they loved, they built, they educated. And at the end of that long, long road, their conclusion was: let's schedule an appointment to die.
What does that say? Seriously, what are we all supposed to take from that? That no matter how hard you fight, no matter what you survive, the endgame is just a slow, grinding decay that you might be better off short-circuiting?
I’m not judging them. How could I? I haven’t lived a tenth of the life either of them did. But I am judging the narrative. The rush to call this inspiring or brave. Maybe it wasn't brave. Maybe it was just… tired. The profound, bone-deep exhaustion of two people who had simply had enough. Enough of the struggle, enough of the failing senses, enough of the world.
Then again, maybe I’m the crazy one here. Maybe in a world obsessed with optimizing every second of our lives, scheduling your own death is the most logical conclusion. The final act of productivity. Ticking the last box. It's just so bleak. A woman who survived a death camp dies in a death clinic, and we're supposed to call it progress.
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In the end, it’s not a story about the right to die. It's an indictment. It’s the story of a woman who survived the 20th century’s greatest horror, looked at the quiet dignity of 21st-century old age, and decided the first option was the more survivable one. She didn't shuffle off this mortal coil. She signed off on it, because the terms and conditions of staying were no longer acceptable.
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