by Kate Stewart
Near the former Goethe tree are memorials dedicated to the various populations of prisoners held at Buchenwald. I stopped at the memorial for murdered Jews: a long, simple, rectangular pit of stones. Along one side reads Psalms 78:6: “So that the generation to come might know, the children, yet to be born, that they too may rise and declare to their children.” For Mendel, I left at the site three stones representing his three daughters that had scattered across the globe. On the way out I made one last stop at the crematorium and found a room full of bouquets of flowers. I assume that Mendel was cremated here, but there is no way to know for sure.
The next day I went to the Leipzig City History Museum. I learned about the early founding of the city and its history as a center for publishing and music. Near the end of the exhibit is a section on the city’s Jews. I was surprised to see a wall that listed hundreds of names, although Ruth’s and her parents’ were not there. But I sat down at a touch-screen directory to search for them, and there they were. Mendel and Chaja are memorialized on this digital screen, but there is no permanent, tangible marker anywhere in the city, no proof that they had once existed here.
In the 1950s Ruth applied for restitution for the deaths of her parents and provided the meager documentation that she had about them.12 She may have received in the mail more records related to her father’s imprisonment and death during this process, but I am unsure if she ever saw the documents held at the International Tracing Service, as Peter did not find copies of them with her other papers after she died. Near the end of her life, she claimed, “I’m not sure I wasn’t avoiding it but I wasn’t trailing the Holocaust. I mean, I was future oriented, not backwards. What happened, happened.”13 Did she ever see the list of Mendel’s belongings? Did she know he died of heart failure? Did she ever read about Buchenwald to learn what happened there? Maybe she decided she didn’t want or need to know.
Chapter 15
In September 1946 Ruth threw herself into work and college, enrolling in Russian Literature, Introduction to Theater, and a sociology class on race relations. She may have been inspired to take this class after the incident with the Washington State Press Club. Jim may have helped her through this extraordinarily difficult time. She remembered:
The only time I did not want any more than what I had, that I was deep down inside of me happy and contented was with Jim, in spite of all the unhappiness and misery his love had attached to it—when I was with Jim I did not want anybody else, I was happy, I was content—I stopped looking for the indefinable, I did not care where we went, what we did, what I wore, what people said or did—he was all I needed and yet, maybe one can or should not live like that all one’s life—maybe it should just be an episode, a happy interlude to draw strength from, something beautiful tucked away in memory? Who knows?1
She remarked that Jim was possessive of her, and she did not mind. She had dated many Jewish men in Seattle, but none of them had excited her the way Jim did. Dating an Arabic man probably shocked her friends and family. Ruth noted later her pattern of falling in love with men who were somehow off limits; these relationships were always doomed. Ruth and Jim had discussed marrying but knew it was impractical, not only for social and religious reasons. He would graduate in December 1946 and had been accepted as a PhD student in engineering at the University of Minnesota, to start in January. She remembered the holiday season of 1946 as probably the best one of her life:
2 years ago, Xmas 1946, I had Jim, uncle and auntie were out of town & Xmas vacation at school was just one round of gayeties, parties, etc. Aziz Sedky came to town, & between our house, the Transcript office & Jim’s house we were having some wonderful times, though somewhat saddened by Jim’s impending departure. Also Gail gave a big Hanukkah party and Jim & I went, & Hillel had a party, there were not only people, there were friends and New Year’s Eve, we all had a marvelous time—I was so much in love with Jim then, anyplace where we could be together was heaven—and in November & December of that heavenly winter we were together 24 hours of the day.2
It had to end, of course, and in January he left for Minnesota. Why didn’t Ruth go with him? It was impractical to marry at the time, with both families probably against it and Jim still in school. Ruth probably also wondered what she would do in Minnesota. She would be unlikely able to find a job as fulfilling as her work at The Transcript. They promised to stay faithful to each other, and she hoped that he would return to Seattle after graduating.
Ruth continued as editor of The Transcript. She was obviously lonely during this period, although she remained busy with more classes, including another on Russian literature. She remembered walking over the Montlake Bridge near her uncle’s house to the University of Washington Golf Course (later taken over by the sprawling university hospital) on the other side of the Montlake Cut. She had walked there frequently at night with Jim; now she went by herself, probably to think about her past and future.
Over the winter term, Ruth took a few more classes but had to withdraw from two of them. At the beginning of 1947, her uncle Carl began to get sick, and Ruth listed his illness as the reason she had to withdraw from those classes. This term would be her last at the University of Washington, and she had passed just enough classes to be considered a sophomore. Carl died in March, and Ruth probably wrote his obituary for The Transcript.3 In the Seattle Times his obituary listed his many memberships and positions in local Jewish organizations.4 An announcement of his estate in the Seattle Times a few days later revealed that he had amassed $540,000 (about $6.14 million in 2018 dollars).5 Ruth was given $10,000, and the rest would be divided among his wife, Dora; his son, Sam; and his daughter, Rose Jacobs. Rose’s husband, Jay, had already opened a women’s clothing store that would eventually become a chain in the northwest called Jay Jacobs. Sam would take over his father’s business, expand into new ventures, and become a well-known Seattle philanthropist. Ruth’s $10,000 was put into an account or trust managed by Sam, who distributed portions to her over the next few years. She had never expected to be taken care of financially; from the time she arrived in the United States, she knew she was on her own. But the inheritance was enough for her to finish college or get started on a new adventure. She chose the latter.
She recalled her twenty-fourth birthday on May 27, 1947: “Last year I had such a wonderful birthday in Seattle—my interview with Zev got me a job in Frisco, for the first time I had a birthday cake with candles, after working late at the Transcript [Rabbi] Franklin picked me up, we went out to eat . . .”6 Zev was W. Zev Bronner, the Pacific-coast director of the Zionist Organization of America.7 She later reflected on this new opportunity:
The American representative to the UNSCOP commission [UN Special Committee on Palestine] was Bartley Crum of San Francisco….so, someone established a “Zionist Emergency Council” to support and feed Bartley….they had one person to set up the office (a childhood friend and class mate of Teddy Kolleck, the famous mayor of Jerusalem) and he needed help….somehow he heard about me and came to Seattle and recruited me and I went to SF to work for the Zionist Emergency Council which again put me in a position of meeting all SF Jews with and without money, all the rabbis, lay leaders….you name them….I dealt with them. Another fun part of the job was that frequently I was the “escort” officer for visiting dignitaries (Schlichim?),8 fund raisers, etc.9
Similar to Seattle’s Jewish community, San Francisco’s was deeply divided among assimilated Jews who had succeeded in business and a small enclave of those who had recently emigrated from Europe and were supportive of Zionism. San Francisco was considered the most strongly anti-Zionist city in the nation at the time. Before Ruth arrived in 1947, Rabbi Saul White and Morris Lowenthal had led the city’s Zionist movement and organized against the city’s complacent, wealthy Jews that had joined the American Council for Judaism (ACJ), an anti-Zionist group. They had also convinced Bartley Crum, a well-known San Francisco lawyer, to join their cause in 1945. In what was described as a civil war, the city
’s Jews had turned on each other until the stark news of the Holocaust forced members of the ACJ to open their hearts and wallets to the Jewish National Fund and its efforts to coordinate national fundraising for DPs and Palestine.10
Crum was not, however, a member of UNSCOP, as Ruth remembered. The committee, established in May 1947, included delegates from “neutral” countries, which did not include the US.11 Crum had served on the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine from 1945 to 1946 and had visited Palestine and Europe and advised Truman to urge Britain to allow more Jews into the country. In 1947 Crum published the popular book Behind the Silken Curtain: A Personal Account of Anglo-American Diplomacy in Palestine and the Middle East. That year, he devoted much of his time to speaking at fundraisers and events for the Zionist movement. Meanwhile he was defending himself against a smear campaign and was under daily surveillance by the FBI, suspected of Communist ties due to his work to establish the Progressive Citizens of America and his disagreements with the State Department on Palestine.12
Ruth was the office manager of the San Francisco district of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).13 She would also work closely with the local Zionist Emergency Council. The American Zionist Emergency Council had been founded just a few years earlier and had established local branches that were largely run by ZOA staff members like Ruth.14 She would be involved with nearly every Zionist event in San Francisco and meet everyone who passed through the city related to the movement, as well as get to know the movement’s local leaders.
In June 1947 Ruth moved to 725 Pine Street on Nob Hill, right around the corner from an alley later named for Dashiell Hammett, who had lived there in 1926. San Francisco was in a housing crisis, as people streamed into the city looking for jobs and a new life after the war. Ruth remembered wandering around, sometimes on her own, lonely for Jim. She described one specific evening: “I had just moved into my Pine Street apartment, everybody had left town, Aziz & the boys, and I felt just as low & lonely as tonight—I called Jim several times, finally about 9pm I talked to him—after that I could not stand being alone any more, I went to the International Settlement, in the St. Moritz (3 little Swiss). The waiters were astonished to see a young lady unescorted come into such an expensive place . . .”15 She may have found it amusing to eat at this restaurant named after the city she and her mother visited so long ago. Ruth seemed to be mulling over the past when she first moved to San Francisco, but she couldn’t for long. Her days and nights would soon be consumed with events, parties, planning, and socializing with the city’s Jews.
In July, Esther Elbaum wrote Ruth a long, thoughtful letter, advising her about both her love life and career. Concerning Jim, she cautioned:
The contents of your last letter described a situation that I assume is past history, for you would certainly not have gone to the rainy city of hills and UN’s birth if your romance with this Egyptian had culminated in any permanent kind of relationship. I, of course, did not react as you seemed to expect—with condemnation and disapproval. I only felt, when I read your letter, that it was unfortunate that you should be in the grip of an infatuation with what sounded like an utterly charming person who is completely unsuited to your lifestyle. Make no mistake about it, Ruth, it is very difficult to live with anyone who has views diametrically opposite to yours on politics or any kind of issues which excite great emotional overtones and loyalties. Not that you must marry a farbrenteh [ardent] zionist, but to consider marrying a man who is accustomed to a different treatment of women, and an entirely different outlook on life from yours in that important respect is inviting trouble . . . I only have this to say—when you do marry, don’t marry a man to change him, marry a man whom you think you can like as well as love, and one who shares your opinions on such basic matters as politics, religion (or the lack of it) and the place of women in society.16
Ruth probably already knew that Esther was right, but she seemed to have taken her advice seriously; she would never marry a man just for the sake of security or in the midst of blind passion. Despite her private pining for Jim, she would continue to be wary of most men and to refuse to sacrifice her own career, her opinions, and her freedom at the altar of the postwar rush to marriage and family life.
In the same letter, Esther also advised Ruth not to get too caught up in her new job: “Now that you are working for a Jewish organization you might become very cynical at what you see about the vast gap between the very un-idealistic behavior of the people who work for idealistic causes. It requires a great deal of faith in humankind to work for one of the Zionist organizations and yet keep to Zionist ideology.” This advice might have not yet meant much to Ruth, as she was just starting out at her new job, but it would surely mean a lot to her in the near future.
Ruth had longed for a job with meaning and one that would bring her some public recognition—ideally connected to the Zionist movement—and now it was actually happening. She later described her work with the ZOA in a résumé: “supervising 2–3 clerical employees; correspondence with regional offices and outside agencies; report writing; writing publicity releases; arranging press and radio interviews; record keeping; planning meetings and conferences; community relations.”17 Looking back, she reflected on not only her hard work but also the recognition she was starting to receive: “Morris Schwarz put it very aptly when I left Seattle, saying ‘here you are a big fish in a little pond—why go & be a little fish in a big pond?’ at the time very confident I thought I could go & be a big fish in a big pond—well, it was a hard struggle in S.F. but looking back I think I was on the way [to] becoming a big fish there.”18 In San Francisco she was continuing to meet powerful people, although her job in many ways was still a lowly secretary. Rabbi Cohn wrote to her in September, with his notorious sense of humor: “I am happy to learn that the office in spite of your presence is working efficiently. I hope that by the time I shall be again in San Francisco you shall not have become Executive Director, but kidding aside, Sam Tarshis told me you are doing a grand job, which does not require any raise in salary.”19 Ruth responded to Rabbi Cohn, explaining, “All I can say is in all my life I haven’t worked as hard as this . . . Such a mad-house is incomparable to anything or anyplace I’ve ever had occasion to see or be.”20
Chapter 16
Zionists claimed a series of victories in the fall of 1947, both internationally and in San Francisco: in September the UN Special Committee on Palestine published its recommendations to support a new Jewish state; in October the United States, backing the majority decision of UNSCOP, announced at the UN its support for the Partition Plan, a resolution declaring that a new Jewish state in Palestine should be established along with an Arab state and international control over Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The San Francisco district of the ZOA announced the results of its election on October 13, with George Edelstein as the new president and fifty-four board members. The chapter also noted that it would raise a minimum of $25,000 for the Jewish National Fund during the next Jewish year and that a thirtieth-anniversary celebration of the Balfour Declaration would be held at a rally on November 2.1 These victories were immense for San Francisco’s Zionist community, which had barely existed just a few years earlier.
Rabbi Cohn wrote to Ruth again in October, informing her that he was moving to San Francisco for a new job as regional director of Histadrut, the Zionist labor party, and asking her to help find an apartment for him and his family, noting, “Eventually, it would be a good idea that we take over your apartment and put you out on the street. I am sure that some other guy will pick you up from the corner.”2 After a frantic search, Ruth wrote back to him, “‘Where do we go from here?’ . . . Germany, Seattle, San Francisco . . . in the future let’s coordinate our plans? . . . All joking aside, and very seriously, I’ve tried my damndest to find you a place to live . . . no soap . . . it’s the toughest assignment.”3 Ruth had moved into a better apartment on Hyde Street that she shared with a few other Jewish women, but the housing situa
tion was even worse than when she had moved to the city in June. Besides working night and day for the ZOA, Ruth was planning for her future. She had applied to the University of California at Berkeley for admittance in the spring.
The Balfour Declaration anniversary celebration was a resounding success, and Ruth no doubt helped pull it off. Held at the Fairmont Hotel, it included a breakfast event, awards by the ZOA for recruitment of new members, and evening speeches by national leaders in the Zionist movement, both Christian and Jewish.4 The flurry of activity that fall came to a head when the UN passed the Partition Plan. Around the world, Jews leaned in close to their radios to hear the votes called under strict rules of silence at UN headquarters. In San Francisco that evening, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Verdi hosted a celebration at their house with over a hundred guests, including leaders of the Zionist community such as Saul White, Morris Lowenthal, George Edelstein, W. Zev Bronner, and Rabbi Cohn. In the long list of guests announced in the Jewish Tribune, Ruth Rappaport was the only woman listed as a “Miss.”5
Ruth often recounted a story of the moment while she was living in San Francisco when she was inspired to go to Palestine. She claimed that Golda Meir came to the city for a fundraising trip that Ruth helped plan. Feeling sorry for Golda, whose schedule was always hectic and exhausting, Ruth combined two separate functions into one and took her to the top-floor bar at the Mark Hopkins Hotel. While having cocktails, Golda told Ruth, “You are a Zionist and you mean well . . . but we don’t need any more of your kind of Zionists . . . What we need is for young people with education and training, people like you to come and help us build our country! But you won’t come . . . you’ll raise money for others with less education, less experience, less training to come!” Ruth responded, “Don’t bet on it.”6