by Kate Stewart
It was the first time that I sobbed watching a film in several years. But I could really empathize with everything that I saw. I know that it is a film taken from real life. A typical Jewish tragic film. An old story.
When I saw the film, I automatically thought of a book—“Der Pojaz—Carl Emil Franzos.”
The Jewish girl Hawa, and Fedja, the Muschik, loved each other soo much, they both read a lot—Gorky—and yet there was something like a wall between them—something that I think destroys all mixed marriages. 17
That night, she also saw a Palestinian film called The Land of Promise. It brought back memories of her life in Zionist youth groups and led her to question what exactly she was doing in the United States:
I felt like I was back in my old element—marching, uniforms, Jesus sandals, tents!!!! And yet how far away I am from everything—
red nails
red lips
high heels
finger waves!!!!18
All the pretend, fake, dumb social aspirations!!!
If I would be happier in Erez, [Palestine,] I don’t know! Can people ever be content?19
Chapter 10
Over the summer of 1940, Ruth moved into her uncle Carl’s home on Montlake Boulevard, as she had hoped she would. At some point in 1940, Sonny married Gladys Seidenverg, leaving Ruth as the only one living with Carl and Dora. Although she felt her life was improving, she also felt unease with her other aunt Dora. Ruth pointed out that this aunt was prejudiced against Germans, having emigrated directly from Poland decades earlier.1 Although Ruth was not a German citizen, the fact that she had been born and raised there marked her as a German in Dora’s eyes. Ruth felt increasingly awkward and as if everything she did was wrong. Whether she stayed in her room and read or offered to help around the house, either choice was wrong. She agonized about having friends over and how to introduce them to her aunt. Even trying to decide whether they would eat in the kitchen or bring food up to her room filled Ruth with dread.2
In October she heard from her parents that they were considering immigrating to Shanghai. Ruth knew this would not likely happen, but she also felt that they would “feel very lost” if they came to America. In November the Interclub Council hosted a special dinner for Seattle’s high school girls who were from Europe, and Ruth attended. Starting to feel more welcome in the city by her one-year anniversary of living in the US, Ruth wrote:
I have already been here for over a year, but nevertheless how I have changed. In school I am already at home, know many people with whom I chat, boys and girls, behave relatively freely, and thus as if I had always been here, and I gladly belong here. On the outside there is no more difference between me and the other kids, but forever? I myself do not know!3
Ruth graduated from Broadway High School in June 1941. She was disappointed that the Rubinsteins did not host a party for her, but Sam gave her a nice fountain pen. Her grades had not improved over the year and a half she was a student there. During her last semester, she took courses to prepare for careers appropriate for a woman in the early 1940s, including bookkeeping, shorthand, and typing. Her senior yearbook is full of good wishes from friends she had made at Broadway, an indication that Ruth had indeed made an effort to come out of her shell. Across her photograph, Ruth had signed her name but then blacked it out. Her activities were “Restroom Committee” and “Friendship Representative.”4
After graduation, Ruth enrolled at Seattle’s Metropolitan Business College, and Carl paid for her tuition. She finished courses in accounting and stenography quickly, in half the usual time. She also acquired an apprenticeship at a law firm called Dillon and Carney, where she worked about one hour a day. She aspired to get a full-time job as soon as possible in order to send money to her parents. She knew they had lost everything and was not going to count on the Rubinsteins to send them anything. That summer she read an article in Life magazine about Helena Rubinstein. Ruth wrote that it was “about how she worked her way up, how she now lives, about her character, and that she has twenty-five million dollars. It seems entirely impossible, but nevertheless she is Mother’s cousin.”5 As Ruth was starting out her own career from the bottom, she had at least one role model in Helena, both a woman and a relative.
The longer she lived in Seattle, the more Ruth became determined to be financially independent as soon as possible. Staying with the Rubinsteins long term was not an option, but how could she earn a living, and where would she go? Much of her optimism the previous year had vanished by the fall of 1941. She wrote:
I have simply had enough of living with Uncle and Aunt. I know that I have it really good here, that I have a nice room, eat well, can in theory, at least, do what I want. I have better clothes than many other people, am going to school, and can pay for books, and nevertheless I am not happy. As long as I am dependent upon Uncle, I will not feel free…
And it makes me so dreadfully sad. There goes Rose, making a friendly face towards her mother and getting a house for ten thousand dollars, and with Uncle helping her with five thousand dollars, of which he had promised a few thousand to help my parents out of the hell in Germany. No, he says, he doesn’t have any more money.
Is it any wonder, then, if I am becoming harsh and indifferent, and secretive and cold. Mirjam and her husband in Palestine with hardly anything to eat. [Salomon] when he is still living in a concentration camp in France. [Clara] and her child with not enough to eat. My parents in Germany. Should I then be happy when Aunt is so merciful and buys me a slip (which I don’t like and which she bought on sale)!6
She believed that Carl’s wife had an ulterior motive when she bought new clothes for her: “The way Aunt outfitted me, I realized how much I seemed like an overdressed cow which someone is sending to market. I had the definite feeling that she hopes that I will get a ‘boyfriend’ if I am better dressed!!!!”7 Dora assumed that the only way Ruth would ever move out of the house would be through marriage, but Ruth had no interest in marrying, at least not at this point in her life: “I know that Aunt hopes that I will soon get married and leave her house for good—and if I also felt as I now do that might happen—but it isn’t what I want—I want to be free and not to go into a new imprisonment—and that is how I now feel and therefore I don’t know what I will now do.”8 How Ruth came to this conclusion about marriage at age nineteen is somewhat of a mystery, but regardless, she knew she would not compromise in her firm belief that marriage was not a way out of her unhappy situation. In the meantime she rebelled by staying out late with friends (including Gentiles, of which her aunt disapproved), drinking, and smoking, a habit that would soon develop into a multiple-packs-a-day and nearly lifelong addiction.
In March 1941 Carl gave $700 to the Washington Émigré Bureau, an organization in Seattle founded by Jews to help European refugees, to facilitate Ruth’s parents’ immigration to Seattle through the Transmigration Bureau, a national organization that facilitated the transportation costs for Jews trying to leave Europe.9 The money was refunded, however, in November when it became clear that the organization could be of no assistance. On December 3, Ruth wrote in her diary that Carl was going to put up $600 to help her parents obtain visas to Cuba. He paid the Dickstein law firm in Washington, DC, as Ruth remembered it later.10 She wrote in her diary, “Hopefully it is not too late. So many ships have already come that I am losing hope that everything will turn out well.”11
Unfortunately, Ruth’s fears came true. As she explained in her oral history so many years later, “December seventh killed it all.” The day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, she wrote, “Today Japan declared war. What before was unthinkable has happened. . . . No hope of ever seeing my parents again—truly the greatest joy has gone out of my life—while what lies in front of me is only a cursed, unhappy, and hard fate.” The night before, she had gone out dancing with a man named Bert Lang and the Sarkowskys’ sons. She and Bert, whose parents were also in Germany, consoled each other. She speculated, “Who knows, perhaps to
morrow America and Japan will be at war with one another and I will be sent to Japan as number 287342 with many other people or someplace else, to return not at all or as a cripple.”12
A few days later, when the United States entered the war in Europe, Ruth was not only fearful but also outraged and numb:
Now practically the entire world is involved in the war. Mass murder without end! And nevertheless, I have the feeling that many people like the excitement and the sensation and feel particularly well when they feel like martyrs and can feel sorry for themselves.
Since Sunday I have been going downhill with the boredom—I don’t have any close friends, walk around like a sleepwalker—and I am so frightfully indifferent about everything.
I constantly see my parents’ tedious, hopeless life in front of me, no longer a hope that they will get out of Germany—Cuba declared war on Germany today. They are probably hearing only outrageous stories from here on the radio and are very, very, dismayed. I am afraid that I soon won’t have any parents anymore, because if it isn’t a bomb it will be illness as well as the living conditions in Germany that will take them.13
During the winter, even though the world was in turmoil, life seemed to go on in Seattle as if it were untouched by the war, which only made Ruth angrier. Hanukkah and New Year’s celebrations went on as planned, but Ruth didn’t see any reason to celebrate. If anything, America’s entry into the war steeled her resolve to find a job, move out of the Rubinsteins’ house, and achieve real independence. In February 1942 Ruth reported on her new job at the Sun Vacuums Store in Seattle:
I have had my position for 4 weeks as of tomorrow, and I feel rather important, because I came into what you might call a “responsible position”—that is, if one looks experienced—but most of all, I enjoy my work—and I don’t have any time to let myself get bored, because my work is so manifold, and I actually do the work of 3 people. I have fun acting as bookkeeper, secretary, cashier, and telephone girl.14
She enjoyed getting to know her new boss and coworkers, who welcomed her into the business and invited her out to dinner. However, Ruth was uneasy with some incidents she observed at the store. She noted that the customers frequently lied, which made her uncomfortable, but she aimed to find the courage to speak up about it. Furthermore, she didn’t think that the store was necessarily doing anything illegal, but something about her boss, Goldie, reminded her of the con-men types who had come to the restaurant where her mother worked in Leipzig.
She summed up how much she had changed since moving to America, finishing school, and landing her first job:
When I looked at myself through “German eyes” I feel very low.
I smoke too much
I have a crazy modern hairdo
I wear fake jewelry15
Even though she enjoyed her new job, she knew it wasn’t satisfying and that she couldn’t work there long term. A few months later she wrote of her ambitions for the future:
I am always dreaming about doing something with my life, but I am lacking a plan. Today I had the thought that I would like to become a libraryan [sic]. If I can summon up enough energy to work for this, and to use the money that I earn better, perhaps I could take a course in “library work”! […] I don’t want to spend my entire life in a vacuum cleaner business.16
Clearly, both the Zurich and Seattle public libraries had left a lasting imprint on her. When she visited to pick up books or to read and lounge in a space that was not one of her uncles’ homes, she must have noticed and admired the librarians there. They would have been single, educated women, and perhaps they exuded a sense of satisfaction with their work. This dream would not become a reality for Ruth for another seventeen years, but the seeds were planted when she was eighteen years old, if not earlier. In this same diary entry, Ruth listed her eleven goals to improve herself, including “to speak more concisely and precisely” in English and “to do some intellectual work and to read serious books.” She concluded:
To become my own person and to keep my sights on what is written in my poetry album:
Your life is your battle,
Your peace a victory.17
More than a year earlier, on New Year’s Day 1941, Ruth had decided that she wanted a boyfriend who would take her out dancing. She wrote, “Rationally, I am still against an American ‘boyfriend,’ but emotionally I long for one.”18 Although she chafed at her aunt’s efforts to send her “off to market,” Ruth started going on dates but was not seriously interested in any one boy. She still pined for Roger and wondered what he was up to in Zurich. One of her first dates in Seattle was with a man named Larry, a double date set up by her friend Mila so they could all go to Seattle’s Russian Ball. Ruth knew that he was a Christian and married, and she tried to mumble his name when introducing him to her aunt and uncle so they would not suspect he wasn’t Jewish. By 1942 she was not at all seriously interested in Larry, but the experience made her think about Christian men differently and question the stereotypes she had acquired about them:
Sometimes I have asked myself whether I would go out with young Christian men—and I thought now—because I have always imagined Christian boys to be only rougher, coarser […] rather brutal and backward—full of male intentions, simply a Goy—without Jewish background—and when I saw Larry Fealham, 100% Aryan—how did I like him? Better than most Jewish young men—how determined he was—simply wonderful. I simply do not think that the Jews are better.19
Ruth explained how she was sexually harassed at least a few times. She met the brother of a Mrs. Schneider, Kurt Hamlet, who asked her out to dinner. She described how he groped her on this date, but she resisted and left. She fumed, “If he needs a whore, he should go downtown and buy one for money.”20 Mrs. Sarkowsky’s husband, Irving, also groped Ruth. She wrote:
Mr. Sarkowsky—a married man with 3 sons—every time he can get me alone he takes me in his arms and presses me to him so hard that I am afraid he is going to break my entire body, and then he tries to kiss me—and to pass his thick hands under my dress—it has already happened 2 times, and I do not know what I should do—because it happens only when I am alone at home—and he is so strong that I can’t do anything about it—and he is also such a good friend to Uncle and Aunt—if they only knew how he bothers me—and his wife—she is an example of a fine lady—and I hate him more than I do anyone else.21
But Ruth dated several other men who greatly respected her, and she enjoyed spending time with them. When she met Felix Gruenthal, another émigré from Germany, she was surprised to learn that he also had spent time in Zurich and had even known the Herzogs, the second family she had stayed with. Ruth wrote of when they first met, “Strange, how it sometimes goes—you speak 2 or 3 words and feel like old friends.” They had a “European evening,” as she put it, filled with interesting conversation but no necking.22 After a few dates, she invited him home to meet her aunt and uncle and observed, “Funny, everyone thinks that Felix is my ‘boyfriend’ and that I am his ‘girlfriend’—and that we are ‘going out’ together. And the strangest part of the entire thing is that everyone—boys and girls, as soon as they know that you have a ‘boyfriend’ they behave entirely differently towards you.”23 But she was certainly willing to admit, “I like him a lot!”
Young men and women were streaming into Seattle, both as workers for war industry jobs (especially at Boeing, which was building new bomber airplanes), and as newly enlisted troops waiting to ship out to the Pacific. Ruth’s friends from Germany had to obey the new curfew, but because Ruth had her Romanian passport, she was not classified as a suspicious alien.24 The young people she had met in high school and at Herzl’s Congregation Synagogue were now scattering across the country and the world. Her cousin Sam left to join the Army Air Forces and would become a second lieutenant specializing in bombsight maintenance in the Pacific.25 Ruth went to dances at the USO and took photographs with men in their uniforms. In one group of poignant photos from April 1943, she and a friend, Esther L
owinger, goofed around among the cherry blossoms of Green Lake Park with Esther’s husband, named Richard, and Mike Perlgut, both in uniform.
Although dances and parties could distract her sometimes, the reality of the war hit home each time she listened to the news on the radio or read in Hadassah Magazine of the atrocities committed against Jews. And even though she had fled the Nazis as a persecuted Jew, she still was saddened by the news that America and England were now bombing Germany. She wrote in anger:
My entire life strikes me as being so false—everyone so deceitful—how can an educated person rejoice that England bombed Cologne—the city of Cologne didn’t want the war—it is the people who wanted war—it simply pains me to see the city walls destroyed—“fighting” for the country naturally, I would say that the United States has won—but it seems such a waste and so senseless, there must be another way out from this chaos—I simply can’t condone the war my parents are suffering in Germany—Papa’s sisters in Poland and Romania, Clara, Salomon, and Guy in France, my sister in Palestine, and I sit here every day afraid that I will get news that they are already dead.26
Chapter 11
The summer of 1942 would bring new opportunities that would both energize Ruth and give her some solace. Two years earlier she had joined Junior Hadassah, a division of Hadassah, the Zionist group founded by the American Jewish woman Henrietta Szold. A worldwide organization, Hadassah (also known as the Women’s Zionist Organization of America) initially raised money for the Hadassah Hospital in Palestine but soon branched out to provide funds for immigration to the country, the American war effort in World War II, and educational opportunities for Jews worldwide. Ruth became more involved in Junior Hadassah when the West Coast division of the group held a conference in Seattle in July. Ruth was selected convention chairwoman and planned much of the conference. She gave the welcome speech at the Friday night dinner at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel and introduced the invited speaker, Dr. James, who spoke on racism and anti-Semitism and encouraged attendees to think hard about their own prejudices. But more importantly that night, Ruth was reunited with a rabbi she had met years ago, when her Habonim group in Leipzig had taken a trip to the neighboring town of Gera. For the Habonim group, it was the first time these teenagers had “met a rabbi who was strong, Zionist, and understood the problems of young people.”1