My mother, Ruth Brook-Klauber, who has died aged 102, was a flight mechanic during the second world war. In the postwar years she became head of the University Library academic book series published by Hutchinson & Co (now part of Random House) and later still trained as a relationship therapist.
She was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany, the younger daughter of Benjamin Bendix (“Benno”), a paint pigments salesman, and Rosa (nee Ehrentreu). When Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Benno had the foresight to anticipate the coming persecution of Jews and removed the family to London, settling in Hackney.
Aged 16, Ruth left school as her father had been interned as an “enemy alien”, her sister had married and Ruth was tasked with staying with their mother. She took a secretarial course and obtained a job with the publisher Hutchinsons. In 1941, aged 17, she joined the Waaf (the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), choosing to train as a flight mechanic repairing bomber planes on aerodromes across the country. This was a formative experience and one she reflected on many times as an exciting and fulfilling period of her life.
At the end of the war, Ruth returned to Hutchinson’s and moved up the ranks, becoming the head of their University Library in the mid-1950s, commissioning academic books from universities.
Meanwhile her sister Hannah and her family had emigrated to Israel in 1947. Her father followed them after the death of Ruth’s mother.
In 1952 Ruth married John Klauber, a secular Jew of Hungarian parentage who was training as a doctor and psychoanalyst. As many women of her generation did, she gave up her career when they had children – me and my sister, Susan. In the mid-70s, when we were a little older, she retrained as a relationship counsellor with London Marriage Guidance Council, and worked in this role in GPs’ surgeries, a new phenomenon at the time. She worked well into her 80s and also had a private practice.
Following our father’s untimely death in 1981, Ruth married the psychiatrist Alexis Brook, whose wife had also died unexpectedly. Their happy partnership lasted until Alexis’s death in 2007.
Ruth faced her advancing years with fortitude. She joined the University of the Third Age and for 10 years led a weekly discussion group called Exploring Experiences of the Third Age. In 2025 she was surprised to receive the second world war medals she was owed, presented to her by AJEX, the Jewish Military Association. She was interviewed by Sophie Raworth on the BBC on the anniversary of VE Day, and attended a Downing Street party, the memorial service at Westminster Abbey and a garden party at Buckingham Palace.
Ruth remained living independently up to her death and was good at reaching out and making friendships across the generations, as gradually and ineluctably all of her old friends died.
Ruth is survived by me and my sister, Susie, her stepchildren Rebecca and Tim, eight grandchildren, Laura, Daniel, Benjy, Oliver, Clare, Max, Jessie and Jake, and eight great-grandchildren, Charlie, Sam, Georgia, Emil, Felix, Reuben, Sacha and Remmy.
