by Kate Stewart
The first to be interviewed for the full-field investigation was William Bauman, Ruth’s former boss at Grunbaum’s Furniture Company in Seattle, now in Chicago. He could barely remember Ruth. Next, a special agent verified Ruth’s status as a student at Berkeley. A blacked-out name revealed the trouble Ruth had in the fall of 1952: “[Name withheld] stated that the appointee had dropped her classes due to extreme pressure caused by necessary employment hours and class work. [Name withheld] advised that she has had three discussions with the appointee and volunteered that she considers the appointee emotionally unstable and disorganized.”15
Seven of Ruth’s current and former coworkers in San Francisco were interviewed. Lynn Atterman had worked with Ruth at the Zionist Organization of America in 1947, and the two had become close friends, corresponding for many years. In her letters to Atterman, Ruth had detailed her relationship with Viktor, and although she probably hadn’t explicitly said he was a Communist, she had explained he was from Prague and was “stuck behind the Iron Curtain.” Ruth had also explained her job with Max Lowenthal to Atterman, but Atterman only reported that Ruth had never discussed Communism and that she would never doubt Ruth’s loyalty. One current coworker at the army base stated that whereas Ruth admired a kibbutz in Israel that practiced “true Marxism,” she had also said that Stalin’s regime was the same as Hitler’s. Besides the coworkers, six of Ruth’s landlords (including two married couples), a neighbor, and a friend from Berkeley were interviewed in San Francisco.
In Seattle two of her listed references for the army job were also contacted, in addition to thirteen more friends and former colleagues. All of them repeated the same refrain: while Ruth hated Fascists, she was no Communist. In addition to checking all her school and university records, the FBI contacted a local credit bureau and the police to see if Ruth had any records. Another reference in Cleveland, Spencer Irwin, a journalist she had briefly worked for in Tel Aviv, was also questioned. Next, investigators from New York contacted Ethel Waugh, a literary agent whom Ruth had worked for there. Waugh was the only New York employer Ruth had listed on her army employment application, despite the fact that she had worked for many different people there, including Lowenthal. The investigators interviewed seven of Ruth’s landlords, friends, and Zionist colleagues in New York. Local Communist informants stated they hadn’t heard of her. Memos from the spring of 1952 indicated that investigations were conducted in London, Rome, Paris, and Israel, but apparently only the Paris records survived. On April 24, 1952, Ruth passed the investigation and was deemed “eligible on loyalty.”16
After all this, it’s hard to understand why Ruth would want to work for the federal government, much less the army. She hadn’t much enjoyed serving in the Israeli army or working for the government there. She hated bureaucracy, but with the large growth in civilian military jobs after World War II, and particularly with the growth of opportunities for women, perhaps she knew that once she was approved by Hoover himself, the army and the federal government could always be a career option for her.
Chapter 22
On March 10, 1952, Ruth was driving home from her job at the army base when she was hit by an oncoming car. It was reported the next day in the Oakland Tribune: “The accident occurred on the 22nd Street overpass leading from Oakland Army Base to the Bay Bridge approach lanes. Miss Rappaport was taken to Cowell Memorial Hospital with fractured ribs and face cuts. A passenger in Gibbs’ car, Clydel Kingsberry, of 1454 Ninth Street, also suffered face cuts. Gibbs was cited for driving on the wrong side, excessive speed, and no operator’s license.”1
Two months later Ruth received a letter from the doctors and nurses at the hospital, thanking her for the candy she sent them to thank them for their good care.2 This accident was the beginning of a string of bad luck. Sometime in the 1950s Ruth also was a victim of a home fire.3 She apparently also had a gambling habit and admittedly wasted her tuition money in Reno.4 These problems interfered with her ability to stay focused on her schoolwork, and throughout her time at Berkeley she either failed or had to withdraw from many of her classes. But despite these setbacks, Ruth was determined to earn her college degree, no matter how long it took.
In March 1954 Ruth quit her job at the army base.5 Working nights had proved too exhausting. She took on a few positions as a research assistant and secretary for several professors. She worked as a housekeeper too, as blogger Bill Hess reported many years later when describing Ruth’s relationship with cats over the years:
For a time she worked as a live-in housekeeper in Berkeley, California in a home owned by a Siamese cat. “The only place that cat wanted to do its business was inside my alligator shoes,” Ruth grumbles, more than half a century later. Ruth wanted her own room to be a pleasant place, and so she put some beautiful drapes up on the windows. The cat sneaked into her room and tore the drapes to shreds. Ruth put up another set. Again, the cat played its mischief upon them, leaving them in tatters. Again Ruth tried, with the same result.6
Ruth knew she couldn’t continue with this series of temporary and dead-end jobs. She took the Strong Vocational Interest Test for Women, developed by Edward K. Strong of Stanford University. Her scores indicated that the top four professions she showed interest in were lawyer, social worker, psychologist, and librarian. Her score on the femininity-masculinity scale reveals that her general interests were more masculine than the average woman. Strong advised the test takers, “Remember also this is a test of your interests. Your abilities must also be considered. Interests point the way you want to go, abilities determine how well you can progress.”7
In January 1957, after a sporadic eight years as a part-time student (including at the University of Washington), Ruth finally graduated from Berkeley with her bachelor of arts in sociology and a minor in “Oriental Studies.” It appears she was still unsure about her professional future. She spent the next few months working around Berkeley as a freelance translator, researcher, and editor for faculty and graduate students. Over the summer, she worked as the assistant to the regional director of the American Zionist Council, where she probably had secretarial duties similar to those she had in so many other jobs.8 In May she sent a letter to the American Library Association, asking for information about the library profession and entrance requirements to library schools. She also sent letters to eight library schools asking for application information and course catalogs.9
She wrote to one of her former sociology professors, Wolfram Eberhard, a specialist in Chinese folklore and a native of Germany who had left in the 1930s to escape pressure to join the Nazi Party.10 She wrote, “After thinking the matter over very carefully I finally decided that although Sociology will always be my primary interest, for the time being at least, getting a Master’s degree in Librarianship might be more practical for me and more easily feasible than continuing my studies in the field of Sociology, and so I am applying to the School of Librarianship.”11 She asked him for a recommendation letter to both the University of Washington’s and Berkeley’s library schools.
A letter in Ruth’s archives seems almost apologetic about her desire to go to library school. It was “practical” and “more easily feasible” than pursuing sociology. Would she have rather pursued a graduate program in sociology? If so, what was holding her back? Perhaps she was aware of the sexism that women professors and graduate students faced in the 1950s or thought her grades were not good enough to get into a graduate program. They were good enough for library school, though. Libraries were on a hiring binge in the 1950s and ’60s as college and university libraries greatly expanded, and the rapid growth of publications in all fields created a deluge difficult for catalogers to keep up with. Considered pink-collar professionals since the late 1800s, white women librarians did not face discrimination in hiring except at the management level. If she could get her master’s in librarianship, Ruth would not have much trouble finding a job.
The following essay was also part of the University of Washington collec
tion:
XI. Autobiographical Essay
While never directly employed by a library or in library work, much of my previous working experience has brought me in close contact with libraries and their various facilities and personnel. Since childhood I have been an avid reader, and perhaps because of my experiences living in Nazi Germany, where books were burned and banned, I have had a profound feeling and respect for books and their value all my life. The experience of attending a private Jewish school under the Nazi regime and a subsequent one-year stay in Switzerland while waiting to migrate to the United States have made me further conscious of the value of books as a tool for education. I can truthfully say that the most memorable point of my stay in Switzerland was access to libraries and books which opened for me a whole world of new ideas that had been strictly taboo in Germany. Undoubtedly these teenage impressions account for my deep-rooted interest in education and by extension my wanting a profession that in some manner aids education. In my sociological studies, where my interests centered on so-called underdeveloped areas, I was again and again struck by the importance of the printed word and its dissemination. These thoughts have also become reinforced both in my travels abroad and in discussion with visiting educators and other travelers from abroad. As archivist for the Israel Government, though perhaps formally rather poorly prepared, I realized that I was temperamentally suited for this type of work and received much satisfaction from it. My research assistantship with Professor Brady, which necessitated daily work in libraries, strengthened this conviction, not only because of my enjoyment in the work but also because of the comments I received from workers in the field on my adaptability and suitability. Perhaps I can restate this sketchy outline in this manner.
Proceeding from the premise that two of the most important factors in choosing a profession are doing work that is worthwhile, satisfying, interesting and stimulating on the one hand, and on the other, being able to contribute something to the job; having accepted education in its widest sense as a primary value; and recognizing my deep and abiding love of books, it only seems natural to think in terms of librarianship as a career goal. Having travelled widely; being conversant in four languages and intending to study one or two more; and considering my research experience with two authors as well as information work for the Government of Israel, I feel that I have something to give to this type of work above and beyond mere academic training. This would include a certain facility for the administration and organization of work. I am not only interested in books, but also in people and peoples. My career goal in long-range terms, after receiving my formal training and necessary library experience, is directed towards helping to build libraries in some of the underdeveloped areas. By helping build libraries I am specifically thinking of helping establish certain services that have proven so effective and useful in the United States and are not established in other countries, as for example, reference services, which I feel would offer an excellent opportunity to apply one’s skill of working with books and people.
I am fully aware that there are many people with greater intellectual or academic achievements than myself, but I do feel that my administrative and organizational abilities may in certain fields of librarianship compensate for some such lack. Furthermore, I feel that my academic record does not truly reflect my academic aptitude because I was fully self-supporting during my undergraduate studies. Lastly I feel that the moral and financial rewards offered by this profession would give me a totally satisfying career and life.12
So it wasn’t just a “practical” decision after all; Ruth clearly had a sense of idealism when it came to her decision to pursue librarianship. She was willing to reveal her childhood in Nazi Germany to the faculty of Berkeley’s library school and use it to boost her chances of admission when her transcript consisted of mostly Bs and Cs. Ruth wanted to emphasize that she was not just another library school applicant who wanted to enter the profession because she liked to read or because she had failed at another career. Books and libraries held a deep meaning for her, and she had the foresight to know that being a librarian didn’t mean that you read books all day, a common misperception of the profession. She recognized that it meant interacting with people who sought information and were beholden to its gatekeepers. Ruth knew that the organization of libraries was the key to their success. Her battles in Israel over the sloppiness of the photograph archive were ample training to prepare her for work as a librarian.
In the same folder as this admissions essay (an original folder that Ruth had labeled “Graduate School Records”) was a handwritten draft list of books and a typed final version titled “Books Read over Last Six-Month Period.” Perhaps another part of her library school application or part of an assignment in one of her library school classes, it is a list of sixty-four titles:
Anthology of Japanese Literature by Donald Keene
The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki
The Story Bag: A Collection of Korean Folktales by Kim So-un
The Wall by John Hersey
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Selected Stories of Franz Kafka
Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Respectable Prostitute by Jean-Paul Sartre
Abel Sanchez by Miguel de Unamuno
Mondo Piccolo: Don Camillo by Giovannino Guareschi
The Colors of the Day by Romain Gary
A Literary Chronicle, 1920–1950 by Edmund Wilson
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad
Lafcadio’s Adventures by André Gide
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
Ten North Frederick by John O’Hara
Farmers Hotel by John O’Hara
Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone
The Man Who Died by D. H. Lawrence
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The Short Reign of Pippin IV by John Steinbeck
Disappearance by Philip Wylie
Devils of Loudun by Aldous Huxley
The Bad Seed by William March
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Miss Julie by August Strindberg
Bus Stop by William Inge
Picnic by William Inge
Tea and Sympathy by Robert Anderson
Borgia by Klabund
Der Kreidekreis by Klabund
Chinesische Gedichte by Klabund
Das Urteil by Franz Kafka
Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann
Königliche Hoheit by Thomas Mann
Das Gesetz by Thomas Mann
Professor Unrat by Heinrich Mann
Der Gärtner by Rabindranath Tagore
Phantastische Nach by Stefan Zweig
Kleine Chronik by Stefan Zweig
Verwirrung der Gefühle by Stefan Zweig
Sternstunden der Menschheit by Stefan Zweig
Tehilla and Other Israeli Tales
The Literature of Modern Israel by Reuben Wallenrod
Scapegoat of Revolution by Judd L. Teller
The Kremlin, The Jews and the Middle East by Judd L. Teller
100 Hours to Suez by Robert Henriques
What Price Israel by Alfred M. Lilienthal
There Goes the Middle East by Alfred M. Lilienthal
Between Man and Man by Martin Buber
Black Hamlet by Wulf Sachs
Only Yesterday by Frederick Lewis Allen
The Big Change by Frederick Lewis Allen
The Age of Jackson by Arthur M. Schlesinger
Collection of Essays by George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
1984 by George Orwell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Law of Civilization and Decay by Brooks Adams
Toulouse-Lautrec by Gerstle Mack
One Little Boy by Dorothy W. B
aruch13
This remarkable list offers a window into Ruth’s reading life that she only occasionally mentioned in the letters and diaries she left behind. If she truly read every book on this list over six months, she would have completed one about every three days. The list reflects Ruth’s wide-ranging nonfiction interests: Israel and the Middle East, Asia, sociology, philosophy, psychology, history, art, and drama. She had included Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex on her draft of the list but for some unknown reason left it off the final version. The fiction she read was challenging; some of the titles written in the mid-twentieth century are now considered classics. Most of them addressed social issues she was concerned about: censorship, race, gender and sexuality, religious fanaticism, and alienation. Twenty years after she read banned books as a teenager in Germany, she continued to read books by those banned authors, including Hemingway, Kafka, Zweig, Thomas Mann, and Heinrich Mann.
Chapter 23
The person deciding Ruth’s fate concerning her admission to library school was J. Periam Danton, known as Perry, the chair of Berkeley’s School of Librarianship. The son of two American German teachers, Danton had grown up in China. Michael Buckland wrote in his introduction to Danton’s oral history at the University of California Archives, “His undergraduate experience was also highly untypical because he accepted an invitation to join his father in Leipzig for the academic year 1925–26 . . . Leipzig was still in the twilight of its greatness, not yet undermined by Nazism and by the devastation of the Second World War . . . To spend a year in Leipzig was, predictably, a powerful experience. German and Austrian scholarship and librarianship became central to his interests.”1 If he indeed read Ruth’s admissions essay, perhaps her opening paragraph would have sparked an interest in her. Whether they ever knew about each other’s backgrounds in Leipzig remains a speculation.