she's got blood in her eyes for you.

[eisenhardt]

MY DEWY-EYED DISNEY BRIDE, WHAT HAS TRIED SWAPPING YOUR BLOOD WITH FORMALDEHYDE? MONSTERS? WHISKEY-PLIED VOICES CRIED FRATRICIDE! JESUS, DON'T YOU KNOW THAT YOU COULD'VE DIED (YOU SHOULD'VE DIED) WITH THE MONSTERS THAT TALK, MONSTERS THAT WALK THE EARTH. AND SHE'S GOT RED LIPSTICK AND A BRIGHT PAIR OF SHOES, AND SHE'S GOT KNEE HIGH SOCKS, WHAT TO COVER A BRUISE. SHE'S GOT AN OLD DEATH KIT SHE'S BEEN MEANING TO USE, SHE'S GOT BLOOD IN HER EYES, IN HER EYES FOR YOU.

[ trigger warning: this character's history involves the genocide of world war ii, as well dubious consent ]                   Ruth (later Judith) was born in Nürnberg, Germany, the daughter of Jakob and Edith Eisenhardt. Six years later, in 1928, she was given a sibling, Max (later Erik). The two attended separate schools as they grew up, but were close at home, as was the entire family, including Max and Ruth's uncle, Erich, who lived with them. Though they weren't wealthy, they lived in relative comfort until the rise of the Nazi regime in 1938. Tension quickly turned to hostility, and when skirt-chasing Erich was beaten publicly for having "shamed a German woman" (after the law was changed to forbid Jews from interacting with other races), Jakob refused the suggestion to flee Germany for Poland, instead choosing to stay in their home and figure out the rules of this new, and assumed temporary, violent society. Ruth remained under the radar, with some people assuming her to be a German girl, calling her Greta.                   The Eisenhardts were denied help from Mayor Scharf, a former veteran whose life Jakob had once saved during the first World War. Jakob was beaten by a small contingency of Nazi soldiers, who "could have killed him," but Scharf stepped in, effectively repaying his debt. Afterward, Jakob taught his children, wife, and brother rule number one: fight back, and they stomp in your head. They decided to keep off the streets for as long as it took, but that night, the synagogue near their house was set aflame. Though they didn't know it at the time, Kristallnacht had begun, during which thousands of businesses were looted and thousands of men were arrested.                   Fleeing to Poland in early 1939, Ruth and her family arrived at a friend's of Erich's farm, named Cecelia. Almost immediately, the Nazis invaded. Einsatzgruppen ("operational groups") hunted down Jewish and Polish intellectuals and civilians, killing over 16,000 people in just two months. Jakob and the others fled to Warsaw, where Jakob assumed they would be safely faceless among hundreds of other Jews living in the occupied city. They lived in poverty, like many others like them, and by the time one year had passed, the Warsaw ghetto had been constructed: an area less than two miles long, surrounded by a barbwire-tipped wall, where all Jewish families were forced to live. During the winter of 1941, weak from malnutrition and starvation (despite the stealing and smuggling her brother became quite proficient at), Ruth's health began to steadily decline. Not a year later, the others worried that she and her elderly father would soon be taken to Auschwitz and the gas chambers.                   Max had become an efficient smuggler in that time and had a plan to sneak his family out through the ghetto wall. The night of the escape, however, soldiers came to their door shortly before nightfall to collect Jakob and Ruth. Another refugee had betrayed them. Jakob and Ruth were taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ruth, who had been given extra rations and conserving her strength for the run to freedom was able to pass herself off as eager to work, and was sent to the women's camp with a short life expectancy. Her father was considered too old and taken to a different line, and Ruth never saw him again.                   In the camp, Ruth spent all her energy trying to stay alive, maintain her ailing health and masking the illnesses she'd become susceptible to as the same weariness as the other prisoners. She did her best to draw on her brother as inspiration, and put to use what tricks she'd learned from him. She communicated with the women who helped occasionally to sort through the belongings of dead prisoners, learned to trade with them; it took her some time still to bribe her way to becoming a secretary. Ruth's years in Birkenau were still lonely, hellish and unpredictable. She and other prisoners were frequently abused by the camp guards, though Ruth did all she could to survive the brutality and cultivated protection by indulging the sexual relationship forced upon her by the commander she worked beneath, August Koehler. He convinced himself that what he felt for her was love; though Ruth despised him, she simulated a mutual interest and grave gratitude. In return, Koehler kept her from the brothel and the gas chambers. The thought of returning to her brother and mother became her sole driving force even as she increasingly doubted their survival. She watched others come and go, die and burn. Once compassionate, she became cold and distant, and stopped trying to befriend or even speak to the others of her camp.                   Come the fall of 1944, her barracks were to be indiscriminately liquidated. Koehler, whom she'd now known for two years, offered to save her if she would consent to be his wife. He planned to leave Germany before the war ended to escape accountability for his crimes. Ruth accepted, since it meant saving her life, and was hidden that night behind a false wall beneath the kitchen's coal chute. Koehler kept her there for days, though he provided her with food, a bucket and a blanket. The night of the revolt passed, after which it was two days before Koehler came for her again. He interrogated her, attempting to suss out any involvement she may have had in the revolt. When he was satisfied she hadn't betrayed him, he told her he would smuggle her out of the camp in a suitcase.                   He did, and from there she was taken by train (in one of the luggage cars) to Koehler's cabin in Buchenbach, where he spent several days with her and even gave her an expensive ring he had taken from the former belongings of gassed prisoners. When he left to return to Auschwitz-Birkenau, he promised he would return for her. Ruth knew she could not escape the country on her own; regrettably, the safest place for her to be was in the bed of a Nazi. She remained in Buchenbach and took the false name of Greta Koehler, after, upon his next visit, Koehler provided her with falsified documentation. In November 1944, after the dismantling of the crematoria in Auschwitz, Koehler was ready to take Ruth and leave before the Allies moved in any further. Together, they went to Switzerland, where Koehler was forced to bribe officials heavily in order to gain them entrance.                   It was in the thick crowd as they disembarked that Ruth finally ran from her "husband." She took both their trunks and threw herself into a taxi, which she rode to the train station and there managed to sneak onto a train heading for Zurich. She disposed of both her former names and began to go by Judith Lehnsherr, her new surname a tribute to her happier childhood. She was able to secure her own apartment with the hard cash Koehler had taken with them. The rest of his belongings she sold or destroyed, including the wedding ring. It wasn't until 1945 and the liberation of Auschwitz she began seeking her family, but all that remained was her brother. His name was the only thing she could track down; he, too, had established a new life with proficiency. Cowardly, she did not pursue.                   Remaining in Switzerland for some years after the war, Judith lived on her own, saved the money she'd taken from Koehler and worked to accrue her own, first in a bookstore and then in a small independent gallery. With her savings, she moved to France in 1948 to attend school, and graduated four years later with a degree in art history. Though she considered moving to America, Judith ultimately returned to Switzerland when a position at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire became available in Geneva and continues to reside and work there in 1962.