Former Baltimore resident Eva London Ritt — a Holocaust survivor who fought for the rights and freedom of Soviet Jewry — passed away last Saturday, May 9.
The resident of Highland Park, Illinois, was 93.
Born in the German city of Hamburg, Ritt was 5 and the youngest of three children when Kristallnacht, the infamous “night of broken glass” orchestrated by the Nazis, took place in Germany and Austria in November of 1938.
“I do remember Kristallnacht when they burned the synagogues, destroyed Jewish businesses, and arrested men and boys,” she told WKMG-TV in Orlando, Florida, in 2021. “I remember my mother running to the school where my brother attended because the synagogue next to it was burning, and they arrested all the teachers. … [A] very short time after we left Hamburg, where I was born, the roundup of Jews began.”
In May of 1940, Ritt and her immediate family decided to flee Germany and took a train to Italy but were stopped at the border.
“The German police got on and told my father his papers weren’t in order, he has to get off the train,” she recalled. “Of course that would’ve meant all of us, and he said, ‘My papers are in order,’ and the Italian military was standing right there and they said to the Germans, ‘We’ll take care of it.’ So the Italians saved our lives.”
A few days later, she and her family boarded a ship bound for New York from the Italian city of Genoa. The family resettled in Baltimore, where her mother’s cousin lived. Most of their extended family perished during the Holocaust.
Eventually, Ritt became a registered nurse, married a Canadian, Daniel Elliott Ritt, and raised a family. She also was a leading activist and advocate in central Florida for Jews in the former Soviet Union.
“I could not sit back and watch what was going on in the Soviet Union and not provide aid to our own people,” she said.
In 2015, Ritt donated her personal archive of materials from the Soviet Jewry movement era to the Yeshiva University Archives. The collection included correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs and artifacts from the 1970s and 1980s.
“I’m very glad that the archives found a home,” she said. “It’s an important part of modern-day Jewish history, to see the grassroots effort and organizations that worked together and were successful. It’s what the Jewish community of central Florida did. It’s important for future generations to know.”
In addition, Ritt worked as an administrator at the Holocaust Center of Florida in the city of Maitland and frequently spoke about her wartime experiences at schools.
“Learn the history, don’t repeat it,” she advised students. “There’s no room for prejudice. Everybody is a human being, and that kindness goes a long way, and it doesn’t take much effort.”
Ritt is survived by her children, Simon Ritt (Jan Collins), Linda (Stuart) Kupfer, and Michael (Jenny) Ritt; her sister, Ruth DiStefano; and her grandchildren, Avi Kupfer (Conner McMains), Noam Kupfer, Liora Kupfer, and Matthew Joseph, Summer and Blaze Ritt.
She was predeceased by her husband of more than 50 years, David Elliott Ritt.
Services will be held on Wednesday, May 13 at 10 a.m. at Chevra Ahavas Chesed Cemetery, 9780 Liberty Road in Randallstown.
Contributions in Ritt’s memory may be sent to the Illinois Holocaust Museum, 9603 Woods Drive, Skokie, Illinois 60077; or Jewish United Fund, 30 S. Wells Street, Chicago, Illinois 60606
The family will sit shiva at 201 Teapot Court in Reisterstown on Wednesday only.
Ritt shared her story with the Holocaust Memorial Center of Maitland in 2017:
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