Ruth Salton

Ruth Salton passed away peacefully at home on July 20, 2022, surrounded by her family. Ruth led a remarkable life one in which she embraced challenges and acted to improve the lives of others. She lived her life with tenacity, courage, humor, and love. Her long adventurous journey was inspirational to all who knew and loved her.

Born in Tomaszów Lubelski in southeast Poland, she was visiting her aunt in 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland. As the Germans began to move Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto, she slipped out of the city and traveled by foot at night almost 200 miles to her hometown. Ruth found that her family and most of the town’s Jews had fled to the Soviet controlled portion of Poland. Soon after Ruth was able to join her family, the Soviets swept up the Jewish refugees and moved them to a labor camp in Siberia where they worked cutting down primordial forests for lumber.

With the end of the war, Ruth and her family returned to Poland. Ruth joined the Bricha, an underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors leave Europe for Palestine. Ruth worked to bring together and support survivors and smuggle them out of Poland to various ports where they boarded ships to run the British blockade of Palestine. She also returned to Poland to find Jewish children hidden by their parents at convents, gentile owned farms and homes to bring them to Israel to be raised and live as Jews. In both of these efforts, Ruth demonstrated courage and commitment driven by her compassion for her fellow Jews.

After living in Israel for two years, Ruth came to New York City with her family. There she met the love of her life, George Salton, a Jewish private in the US Army and a survivor of ten concentration camps. They married and moved to Rome, N.Y. where Ruth raised three children while George worked for the Air Force and went to college at night. In Rome, Ruth founded a synagogue and the Rome Arts Association which remains active today. George, after earning two college degrees, was hired at the Defense Department in Washington, D.C. Again, Ruth helped support the founding of a synagogue and worked with Jewish refugees, this time those who left the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Ruth opened a ballet school with two Jewish former members of the Bolshoi Ballet. In the 1980s, Ruth opened a successful catering business which she ran until George’s retirement and their move to Florida.

Together with George, Ruth founded the Palm Beach chapter of Leah and, thereafter Insight, organizations dedicated to the education of young people about the Holocaust. After 63 years of marriage, George passed away in 2016. Ruth is survived by her children Henry Salton and wife Kathryn Calibey, Alan Salton and wife Vicki Salton, and Anna Eisen and husband Dr. David Eisen; her grandchildren, each her favorite, Daniel Salton, Sarah Salton, and her husband, Carter Eckley, Benjamin and Joshua Salton, Erica Kahn and her husband, Jared Kahn, Aaron Eisen and step-grandson Matthew Vecchio.

Ruth will be remembered as a loyal friend, a great cook, a talented artist, the consummate hostess and throughout her life an energetic exercise role model. Most of all, she was a loving wife, mother and grandmother.

Services will be held on Wednesday July 27, 2022 at 10:00 at the Star of David Funeral Home, 9321 Memorial Park Road, West Palm Beach, Florida. In lieu of flowers, Donations may be made to Temple Judea, 4311 Hood Road, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida 33410.