About: Martha Ruben-Wolf

Martha Ruben-Wolf (17 June 1887 – 16 August 1939) was a German physician and author who became a political activist (KPD) after World War I. After the Nazi take-over in January 1933 she emigrated with her family, ending up living permanently in the Soviet Union. A series of disappointments followed and she became increasingly disillusioned with the Soviet system which earlier, when she had written about the Soviet Union as a visitor from the west, she had eulogised. Her husband was identified as a Gestapo spy and executed in 1938. On 16 August 1939 Martha Ruben-Wolf was still unaware of what had happened to her husband following his arrest on 27 November 1937 when, despairing, she committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.