Siegfried "Fred" Ruschin Obituary (2008)

Siegfried "Fred" Ruschin, 83, of Overland Park, KS, passed away Sunday, October 19, 2008. Services will be 4:00pm Thursday, October 23, in the chapel at Kehilath Israel Blue Ridge Cemetery. Burial to follow. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education Memory Project, 5801 W. 115th St., Suite #106, Overland Park, KS 66211. Born in Germany on May 18, 1925, the only child of Ludwig and Herta Ruschin, he and his family were persecuted by the Nazis, escaped Germany in July 1939 and eventually ended up in Caracas, Venezuela, in September 1939. Evicted from public schools in Germany, he quickly learned Spanish and became a self-educated expert in radio and television repair. He immigrated to Topeka, KS in 1956, his parents joining him the following year. They settled in Kansas City, MO in 1960. He graduated from Washburn University in Topeka with a B.S. in Physics, received a Master’s in Library Science from Emporia State College and became fluent in English. He had a distinguished career as Librarian for Collection Development at Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, MO from 1959 to 1993. In recent years, he was an active writer in the MCHE Memory Project. His mother preceded him in death in 1959. Siegfried lived with and cared for his aging father until his passing in 1986. The breadth and depth of knowledge he had acquired, his amazing memory of even the smallest detail, his writing skills, his dedication to his aging father, his overcoming the many obstacles in his life, earned the love and respect of his family and many friends. He is survived on his paternal side by Sonja Shpunt in Israel and Fred Hirsekorn in Minnesota, first cousins who grew up with him in Schoenlanke, Germany.