by Kate Stewart
Here it is the 20th century. An era of emancipation and modernism, and yet human beings and society are as interwoven and perhaps even more restricted because of their very freedom as in the Middle Ages. Especially for a girl. It is rather pathetic, just because a woman walks along the beach alone in the evening people get suspicious, turn around, want to strike up a conversation or want to pick her up. And if a girl comes to a new town, unless she has an escort, she can go to but very few places without at least attracting attention, that is usually unfavorable attention, if not men!
What if people want to be alone? […] What if one does not want to be dependent on a friend or husband? Could one really defy society and manage alone? […] It is a vicious circle. Even if one knows no one, everyone knows one……if with wrong company they frown, if alone they ask questions. Cafes are even worse than the bars and restaurants here, as each has “Stammkundschaft [regulars].”
At least in Seattle I could sit by myself in a coffee shop on the Ave, a drug store downtown, and have no one bother about me. Or go for a walk late at night without arousing suspicion.13
Ruth knew that to gain control of her life she needed to find more quiet time by herself and, especially, to focus on reading. In May 1949, she wrote in her diary: “Must sit down & make plans to stop drifting—Must find out what makes me always want to ‘get someplace’ [and] ‘be somebody’ when I know I have not the stomach to fight for it! Hell, we are all twisted up and jerky—must start doing some organized reading!”14 She listed the four books she was reading, including Prodigal Women by Nancy Hale and Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith. Prodigal Women was a 1942 bestseller. In 2014 Caitlin Keefe Moran wrote that it “is a strange, giant, wonderful book, full of desperate, sad, sometimes wicked, sometimes pitiable, women.” Moran went on to describe the character of Leda: “Leda is deliciously unlikeable. She is described as ‘frantic with self-consciousness and envy and desire’; she exclusively ‘hated people, or envied them, or scorned them.’ She schemes for social power, she carries on affairs with the husbands of her friends, and above all she feels no shame.”15 Strange Fruit was censored in the United States in 1944 due to its frank portrayal of a southern interracial romance. Reading books like these, one about women who broke the boundaries, another that spoke the ugly truth of racism, Ruth continued to find comfort in stories that spoke to her own experiences or opened new worlds to her. No doubt, books by women writers helped Ruth define and analyze the experiences and difficulties she herself faced as a woman.
When she thought about her future, Ruth most often thought about Viktor, but she wondered if he was just a psychological crutch for her. She hadn’t heard from him in months, although she had run into reporters who had been to Prague and seen him there. Finally she sent him a telegram on his birthday. Soon after, she received a five-page letter from him in which he asked if she would like to meet him in Paris, which lifted her spirits.16 She struggled to decipher what this actually meant: Did he want to get married? For the next few months she did not hear from him, and her hopes were dashed when Robert Capa returned from Europe empty-handed, whereas Ruth thought he might have brought a letter or message from Viktor. Throughout those agonizing months, she thought about various options: Could she marry him and live in Prague? Would he come to the United States with her, and could he be happy living there, in such a materialistic and dog-eat-dog society? There were so many options of where to live and under what circumstances—marriage or perhaps living together or separately—but Ruth carefully combed over and weighed each of them in minute detail in her diary.
She dreaded going back to the United States without Viktor. She craved the freedom of the United States and the stability she had experienced in Seattle but hated the idea of going back and feeling like a failure, or worse, begging the Rubinsteins for money. She knew that the United States was her best shot at a fulfilling career but detested the compromises that came with it in this new postwar society: the complacency and ignorance about what was happening in the rest of the world. In the spring of 1949, she pondered:
Made a rather odd discovery today—talking about the States & looking at American magazines—it all hardly seems real any more—it is almost as if it never was—& when f.e. the question of my return comes up—return? It’s something unreal too—almost like my first migration there. Sure I can mentally think back on all the various even minutest experiences—but it is more like a book I once read—not like something that has really happened to me—in fact—some books seem much more real!17
For months she created lists for and against returning to the US or remaining in Israel. This was a strategy she used often in making decisions throughout her life. Even after she retired, she would carefully weigh her options before any major decision. List-making created order in the chaos of her mind and reminded her that logic and reason should always guide her path. Even so, when thinking of returning to the US, she seemed to be facing a brick wall. What would she do there? Would she ever feel like she truly belonged? Would she ever get married? And God forbid, would she be stuck in a secretarial job forever? On June 5, 1949, she wrote her last ever (or last surviving) diary entry in Israel, including one of her lists of options, all of them depressing to her:
Should I go home? The truth is this—
If I stay here it is not because I want to stay here, but because I don’t want to go home. I do not have the nerves for the family.
I do not have the strength to start all over again there, especially with the worsening conditions.
The men that might want to marry me there I could not stomach!
If I go home, it is because I don’t want to stay here. not real friends
not enough income
no place to live
Both being negative reasons, it really does not matter much what I do—only, when will I stop drifting and know what I want & go after it? Maybe never—perhaps I’m just one of those people who cannot live on their own—
Whatever I look towards is no good—and yet what instead.
a white brick house with a picket fence in Seattle, no—
a furnished room in Israel all my life? No! So there—18
By the end of the June, Ruth had been discharged from the Israeli army. She was given the option of continuing at the PIO job as a civilian. Her coworker, Alisa, quit, giving Ruth a chance to take her position and finally run the office how she wanted. Ruth revealed in her diary that when Alisa had been on vacation, she had gotten a glimpse of the “inefficient, slovenly job” she did managing the archive.19 Ruth continually complained to her supervisors about the disorganization of the archive and had many ideas about how to improve operations to meet its stated mission—to provide relevant photos to both government officials and the public in a timely manner. It embarrassed her when journalists on a deadline requested necessary photos and the PIO repeatedly failed to provide them. She now had the opportunity to overhaul the office into the well-oiled machine she knew it could be.
A month after she started the new position, Ruth wrote a letter to her boss, Lieutenant Colonel Moshe Pearlman, to inform him that she had neither received the authority to make the necessary changes in the archive nor gotten her first paycheck as a civilian. With this letter, she submitted a typed list of “Suggestions for Changes and Additions in Archives Department” that included recommendations for more photographs submitted on certain topics (including women); weeding out duplicates; a triple-reference card index for names, places, and events (no doubt based on the typical library card catalog system); and more accurate and timely descriptions from photographers. To prove that these changes were necessary, she included a three-page typed document of monthly activities, in which she listed all the requests the archive had received and the various reasons why they were not fulfilled in a timely manner.
A copy of a large classification schema that was most likely developed by Ruth to organize the photographs by topic with a call number system from 100 to 5000 is also in her paper
s at the USHMM. Examples of these broad subject headings, listed on the first page, include parades, diplomats, children and youth, cities and towns, and various headings for military and government departments. Each of these headings was further subdivided by many more topics, each with their own call number, on the subsequent pages. She even included headings for PIO parties and specific journalists in Israel. These documents offer a window into Ruth’s sharp mind and her approach to her future work as a librarian. She never saw a job as just a job; she threw herself into her work with unceasing energy and a desire to improve workflows until she was satisfied that every routine task could easily be accomplished.
Writing descriptions, classifying items by subject headings, typing up catalog cards, and the endless, endless filing—the daily grind—were thankless, tedious tasks that have always fallen to the lowest-paid and least valued workers, often women. But without this necessary work, there would be no archive or no library. Ruth understood this and knew that being able to quickly present whatever item was needed, and the resulting gratitude of the requester, gave her an enormous sense of satisfaction and pride. To be able to simply say “Here it is” gives every librarian and archivist a small thrill. It’s the prize we all seek in the tedious slog of our everyday work.
In August, Ruth started a business with her friend Lee that they called Lee and Ruth, Your Private Mobile Secretary. Bringing their typewriters and stationery with them as needed, they worked primarily for English-speaking men visiting Israel in need of typing, research, translation, and errands. They printed up their own cards with a form that could be filled out by clients and dropped off at the Hotel Gat Rimon. Ruth enjoyed working on these short-term projects and found that her and Lee’s services were in demand throughout the fall of 1949. She was finally able to break even, possibly even save some money. Both Lee and Ruth later moved to New York in 1950 and continued their business there.20
In early 1949 Ruth admitted not only to herself but also to friends back in the United States that life in Israel was just not what so many idealistic Jews had envisioned. To her friend Mila, she explained:
It is all very well to talk of staying in our country, being a Zionist, etc. etc. but after all, life must be faced with a certain amount of realism on the part of an individual. Considering the short time of [Israel’s] existence, the struggle it has had and is still having, etc. etc.[,] wonders have been achieved. However, you don’t live life, or perhaps I should say, I do not live a day by day life reminding myself [every time] my blood pressure goes up [that] Israel is being created. That does not feed me, nor does it make me less hungry. And while I am perfectly willing to take all that comes along, and a little more about that later, for the “duration,” I cannot as yet readily commit myself to take it for the rest of my life.21
If Zionism was something Ruth ever truly believed in, her experiences in Israel killed that dream. A homeland for Jews would not protect her from housing and food shortages, low wages, sexual harassment, date rape, nepotism, or job discrimination. She couldn’t claim that she had faced difficulty there because she was Jewish, and she now realized the significance of connections and the harsh reality of sexism among people who were supposed to be on her side. The United States didn’t promise relief from these problems either, but it did hold one advantage: due to its booming postwar economy, it would be easier for her to build a career there. If anything, Ruth knew that she could make it if she had a steady income and work that she truly believed in and could accomplish every day.
She made a firm commitment to quit her job at the PIO on November 30. She wrote to her friends of her plans to go home, “and by that I mean the States,” she explained. She planned to go to Paris, and to possibly stop in Prague on the way if she could get a visa. This trip would finally confirm if Viktor would be a part of her future. In explaining to her friends and family why she was leaving Israel, she sometimes just wrote that she would tell the whole story in person. To Mila she wrote, “Perhaps it is that a certain phase of my life and experience here is closed, and that I don’t just want to slide into the next without a break. Perhaps the next is less appealing, perhaps I’m afraid of sliding into a civil service rut, etc. etc. Well, anyway, there are many reasons. Also, I need a bit of distance and perspective to digest the last two years, so . . .”22
Ruth spent the next five months in Paris visiting her sister Clara and nephew Guy. If she met up with Viktor, there is no record of it today. She may have received more of her inheritance from her cousin Sam Rubinstein to fund this trip. Many years later Sam wrote a short memoir and briefly explained how his father Carl’s estate was divided up among the family after his death in 1947. He mentioned Ruth’s $10,000 share and stated that she went back to Europe and quickly spent a lot of money.23 He made no mention of her two years in Israel, if he had remembered them at all. Ruth never seemed to have been able to clearly communicate to the Rubinsteins that she was not simply squandering away her inheritance on a world-traveling binge.
When Ruth left Israel, she knew that she would be starting all over again. She could no longer look to the Zionist community for her sense of identity, although she would later occasionally work as a substitute secretary for a Zionist organization in San Francisco and would always defend Israel’s right to exist. She would return at least twice to visit Mirjam, and in her oral history she stated that Yad Vashem, also known as the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, was a more meaningful memorial to the Holocaust for her than the USHMM.24 She later considered returning to Israel to assist Helena Rubinstein with opening a new makeup factory, a plan that was never realized. But at the end of 1949, Ruth was ready to start a new path. Her two years in Israel had changed her life, but not in the way she had anticipated. It had hardened her, challenged what she thought she knew and believed, and made her realize that her search for a true home and sense of belonging was not over, not yet.
I traveled to Israel with my friend Maya, another archivist at the Library of Congress. This was a trip that for years we had talked about taking. Her mother had grown up in Jerusalem, and her sister now lived there. After meeting up at our hotel in the German Colony, Maya and I walked down King George Street and found the apartment where Ruth had lived with Fred Schneider. We walked on just a few blocks more to a construction site for the new museum dedicated to the history of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Plastered to the fence were photos of Israel’s founders, including one of Maya’s grandfathers, who served as deputy secretary of the Knesset for many years. Her brother-in-law, a professional tour guide, showed us around the Old City. We walked through the labyrinth of ancient streets, stopping at a hidden garden at Christ Church, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Western Wall. While Maya went up to pray at the wall, I sat down in a chair and wondered if Ruth, the adamant atheist, had ever come here to pray when she later visited Mirjam. We took a day trip to Tel Aviv to meet up with one of Maya’s friends and found another one of Ruth’s apartments on Ben Yehuda Street. We huddled in the rain on the beach, and I realized that the Carlton Tel Aviv Hotel that we walked by must have been the Ritz Hotel, where the PIO office was.
Back in Jerusalem, I searched on my phone for information on a figure in Israel’s history, Avraham Stern, but the link to his Wikipedia site came up as “Website not available.” I got the same message when trying to read a few Washington Post opinion articles. Why couldn’t I read these websites? It dawned on me that this might be my first encounter with state-sponsored censorship, and it left a sour taste in my mouth and a knot in my stomach.
On my last day in Jerusalem, I walked through the quiet streets on Shabbat to the Israel Museum. I made my way slowly through the Valley of the Cross Park, past the olive trees and the Monastery of the Cross. Ruth often came here to escape Fred, sit on a bench, and write in her diary. At the museum, I saw the Dead Sea Scrolls and endless exhibits of art and artifacts of Jewish life. I walked into an exhibit by Ai Weiwei that featured his sculptures and wallp
aper imbued with symbols related to his experiences living under censorship and violent repression in China. Children danced in their socks across a wide, handwoven carpet that Ai had created for another exhibit in Germany, called Soft Ground: an exact replica of the tile floor of the Haus der Kunst, the art museum Hitler created in Munich. As I stared at Weiwei’s wallpaper, which—patterned in a style that mimicked black-and-white Greek pottery—depicted Syrian refugees, I was overcome with grief for those across the world who still lived under terror and those who took flight and tried to survive as stateless refugees. In the dark lobby of the museum’s library, closed for the day, I sat and tried to collect myself, thinking of Ruth’s apt phrase: “It is all such a vicious circle.”
One ordinary workday, in Washington, DC, I had to take back some archival boxes to our storage area deep in the stacks of the library’s Jefferson Building. Contained in the eastern half of the building and under the Main Reading Room are fifteen floors of closed book stacks—mostly in the areas of history and social sciences—and a few storage cages for archival collections, including those for the American Folklife Center. I waved my badge to get through the first locked door, then struggled to push my bulky cart through two more awkwardly placed doors. For whatever reason that day, I looked up at the first aisle of books right in front of me, which I had never noticed before. They were all about Zionism and Israel.
I was in the DS 101–151 range, “Israel (Palestine). The Jews,” a simple subject heading for one of the most fraught problems of the twentieth century. I had browsed this subject heading and its many subdivisions in LC’s online catalog before, when I searched down the electronic rabbit hole for books that might help me better understand Ruth’s experience as a Zionist and temporary resident of Israel. Countless times I had ordered the books through my staff account and waited for them to be delivered to a small office in the Adams Building, five floors above my own office, where I could then check them out.