Helga Ruth Day

Helga Ruth Day (Geb. Schreiber), a Holocaust survivor, died at home on September 20th 2026 at the age of 91. Helga was born in Berlin Germany an August 2, 1935, 3 years old and the time of the Kristalnacht, and 8 when she watched from hiding, SS men take her Oma from the apartment, load her on a flatbed truck and beat her mother. Her Oma was taken to Theresienstadt and then Auschwitz where she was later murdered. Helga and her parents then sought shelter in various locations, and ultimately were hidden in a brewery by a night-watchman who was a family friend. Helga was 10 at the time of the last Berlin bombing, hiding in a locked Keller, when invading Russians fighting the Nazis, burned the building to the ground; escaping only by breaking through a common wall.

After several years in a DP camp, Helga and her parents arrived in the US in 1951 at age 16, where she stated High School in Pittsburgh as a junior with almost no formal schooling since age 7 and no English, was accepted and earned a BS in microbiology at Carnegie Mellon University and a fellowship and MS at Syracuse University. Helga worked as a research microbiologist for a Detroit Pharmaceutical, and later for laboratories, another Pharmaceutical and a hospital ultimately retiring from the Arizona Department of Health.

Helga and her family moved to Phoenix in 1977 she is survived by her husband Don of 61+ years, son David, Daughter-in-law Rachel, granddaughters Helene & Hannah; daughter Tamara, granddaughter Carly, great-granddaughters Avery and Rylee. Helga is remembered as a devoted mother, loving wife and Oma, generous and giving, spontaneous and clever, forever thinking of others before herself, and one who built a special life. Helga was a member of Sukkot Shalom Synagogue in Berlin and Congregation Beth Israel in Phoenix.