A Well-Read Woman

by Kate Stewart

  2. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Rose Rubinstein, July 15, 1939, RRC, USHMM.

  3. RR diary, April 24, 1939.

  4. Ruth Rappaport, autobiographical essay, Ruth Rappaport Papers, Special Collections, collection no. 5797, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, Washington (location hereafter cited as RRP, UW).

  5. Email from Bettina Roncelli Büchel (archivist at Zentralbibliothek Zürich [Zurich Central Library]) to author, October 8, 2014.

  6. Kenneth D. Ackerman, Trotsky in New York 1917: A Radical on the Eve of Revolution (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2016), p. 139.

  7. RR diary, April 30, 1939.

  8. RR diary, April 25, 1939.

  9. RR oral history, USHMM.

  10. RR diary, April 23, 1939.

  11. RR diary, April 20, 1939.

  12. RR diary, April 23, 1939.

  13. RR diary, April 30, 1939.

  14. RR diary, April 25, 1939.

  15. RR diary, April 23, 1939.

  16. RR diary, September 16, 1939.

  17. Sara Kadosh, “Jewish Refugee Children in Switzerland, 1939–1950,” in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, ed. John K. Roth, Elisabeth Maxwell, Margot Levy, and Wendy Whitworth (New York City: Palgrave, 2001), p. 282; summons for Ruth Rappaport to appear at the Stadtpolizei [city police] Zurich, February 13, 1939, personal documents, RRC, USHMM.

  18. Letter from American consulate in Zurich to Ruth Rappaport, February 13, 1939, personal documents, RRC, USHMM.

  19. Letter from Romanian consulate in Zurich to Ruth Rappaport, April 14, 1939, personal documents, RRC, USHMM.

  20. Letter from American consulate in Zurich to Ruth Rappaport, April 28, 1939, personal documents, RRC, USHMM.

  21. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Carl Rubinstein, May 1, 1939, personal documents, RRC, USHMM.

  22. Miscellaneous letters from summer 1939, personal documents, RRC, USHMM.

  23. Letter from Chaja Rappaport to Dr. Bertha Keller, September 27, 1939, Ruth Rappaport file, SHEK.

  24. RR diary, outline of trip on loose sheet, undated.

  25. Ruth Rappaport, “Curriculum Vita,” circa 1958, RRC, USHMM.

  26. RR oral history, USHMM.

  CHAPTER 8

  1. RR diary, December 16, 1939.

  2. RR oral history, USHMM.

  3. RR diary, December 16, 1939.

  4. RR oral history, USHMM.

  5. RR oral history, USHMM.

  6. Email from Ruth Rappaport to Sig Cohen, February 7, 2008, Sig Cohen personal collection.

  7. Harry Schneiderman, ed., “Statistics of Jews,” in The American Jewish Year Book 4 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1941), p. 661, http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1941_1942_9_Statistics.pdf; Molly Cone, Howard Droker, and Jacqueline Williams, Family of Strangers: Building a Jewish Community in Washington State (Seattle: Washington State Jewish Historical Society, 2003), p. 234.

  8. Seattle city directories; Mark Rubinstein, in discussion with the author, July 13, 2013.

  9. Advertisement for Helena Rubinstein Salon, Seattle Times, April 8, 1934, p. 13.

  10. RR oral history, USHMM.

  11. Mark Rubinstein, in discussion with the author, July 13, 2013.

  12. Census records, 1940.

  13. Seattle city directories, 1937–38.

  14. RR diary, December 16, 1939.

  15. RR diary, December 16, 1939.

  16. Michael Rubinstein, in discussion with the author, April 27, 2017.

  17. RR diary, December 17, 1939.

  18. Email from Ruth Rappaport to Sig Cohen, February 7, 2008, Sig Cohen personal collection.

  19. RR diary, December 17, 1939.

  20. RR diary, December 17, 1939.

  21. RR diary, February 9, 1940.

  CHAPTER 9

  1. Sealth [Broadway High School yearbook], (Seattle: Broadway High School, 1941), RRP, UW; RR diary, May 28, 1940.

  2. RR oral history, USHMM.

  3. RR diary, May 28, 1940.

  4. RR oral history, USHMM.

  5. Quintard Taylor, “Swing the Door Wide: World War II Wrought a Profound Transformation in Seattle’s Black Community,” Columbia: The Magazine of Northwest History 9, no. 2 (Summer 1995), http://www.washingtonhistory.org/files/library/swing-door-wide.pdf.

  6. RR diary, December 17, 1939.

  7. RR diary, December 20, 1939; “Hilde Schocken Mann” (obituary), Seattle Times, August 14–15, 2007, http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/seattletimes/obituary.aspx?n=hilde-schocken-mann&pid=92601843.

  8. RR diary, January 10, 1940; “Miss Rose Rubinstein Is Married,” Seattle Daily Times, February 19, 1940, p. 8.

  9. RR diary, February 19, 1940.

  10. RR diary, January 19, 1940.

  11. RR diary, February 15, 1940.

  12. RR diary, February 6, 1940.

  13. RR diary, March 4, 1940.

  14. RR diary, January 10, 1941.

  15. Ra’hel Bluwstein, Flowers of Perhaps: A Bilingual Edition of Selected Poems, trans. Robert Friend, with Shimon Sandbank (New Milford, CT: Toby Press, 2008), pp. vii–xviii.

  16. John Douglas Marshall, Place of Learning, Place of Dreams: A History of the Seattle Public Library (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), pp. 62–79.

  17. RR diary, January 12, 1941.

  18. Finger waves were a hairstyle popular in the 1940s.

  19. RR diary, January 12, 1941.

  CHAPTER 10

  1. RR diary, January 1, 1941.

  2. RR diary, January 1 and 25, 1951.

  3. RR diary, November 25, 1940.

  4. Sealth [Broadway High School yearbook], (Seattle: Broadway High School, 1941), RRP, UW.

  5. RR diary, July 21, 1941.

  6. RR diary, August 29, 1941.

  7. RR diary, September 21, 1941.

  8. RR diary, September 2, 1942.

  9. Record 5346, Mendel and Chaja Rappaport, Jewish Transmigration Bureau Deposit Cards, 1939–1954, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archives.

  10. RR oral history, USHMM.

  11. RR diary, December 3, 1941.

  12. RR diary, December 8, 1941.

  13. RR diary, December 11, 1941.

  14. RR diary, February 27, 1942.

  15. RR diary, February 27, 1942.

  16. RR diary, May 4, 1942.

  17. RR diary, May 4, 1942.

  18. RR diary, January 1, 1941.

  19. RR diary, March 1, 1942.

  20. RR diary March 1, 1942.

  21. RR diary March 1, 1942.

  22. RR diary, September 2, 1942.

  23. RR diary, September 23, 1942.

  24. RR oral history, USHMM.

  25. “Seattle Youth among Highest at Air School,” Seattle Times, October 30, 1942.

  26. RR diary, June 2, 1942.

  CHAPTER 11

  1. RR diary, June 19, 1942.

  2. “Herzl Synagogue Greets New Rabbi; Officers Elected,” The Transcript, September 7, 1942.

  3. RR diary, August 6, 1942.

  4. RR diary, August 6, 1942. Her picture appeared in the July 25, 1942, issue of the Seattle Times.

  5. Email from Ruth Rappaport to Sig Cohen, February 7, 2008, Sig Cohen personal collection.

  6. RR diary, November 16, 1941.

  7. RR diary, September 2, 1942.

  8. RR diary, September 14, 1942.

  9. Hillel Cohn, in discussion with the author, May 27, 2013.

  10. RR diary, September 23, 1942.

  11. RR diary, September 23, 1942.

  12. RR diary, September 23, 1942.

  13. “Jewish Calendar for Soldiers and Sailors,” October 4, 1942, RRC, USHMM.

  14. “Jewish Girls Launch New Study Class,” Seattle Times, November 8, 1942.

  15. Ruth Rappaport résumé, July 1948, personal documents file, RRC, USHMM.

  16. RR diary, September 24, 1942.

  17. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Mendel and Chaja Rappaport, October 8, 1942, RRC,
USHMM.

  18. Letter from Mendel and Chaja Rappaport to Ruth Rappaport, January 7, 1943, RRC, USHMM.

  19. Willingham, Jews in Leipzig, p. 118.

  20. Ellen Bertram, Menschen ohne Grabstein: Gedenkbuch für die jüdischen Opfer der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgung aus Leipzig [People with no gravestone: memorial book for the Leipzig Jewish victims of National Socialist persecution] (Leipzig: Passage-Verlag, 2011), p. 288.

  21. Correspondence between Ruth Rappaport and her parents, 1938–1946, RRC, USHMM.

  22. “Europe’s Jews Face Extermination in ’43,” The Transcript, April 26, 1943.

  23. “Junior Hadassah,” The Transcript, May 24, 1943.

  24. “Junior Hadassah Over Subscribes,” The Transcript, July 5, 1943.

  25. “Zionist Youths Plan Breakfast for Levinthal,” Seattle Times, July 27, 1943.

  26. Minutes of Junior Hadassah National Board Meeting, May 13, 1943, records of Hadassah, RG 15, box 9, Center for Jewish History.

  27. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Naomi Chertoff, October 18, 1943, RRC, USHMM.

  28. Junior Hadassah convention program, 1943, RRC, USHMM.

  29. Letters from Ruth Reicher to Ruth Rappaport, 1944, RRC, USHMM.

  30. Letters from Zeanna Berliner to Ruth Rappaport, November 21 and 29, 1943, RRC, USHMM.

  31. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Caroline Ruelf, March 13, 1944, RRC, USHMM.

  32. Ruth Rappaport résumé, July 1948, personal documents, RRC, USHMM; “Mission, Vision & Programs,” Amara (website), https://amaraputskidsfirst.org/mission-vision-programs/.

  33. Anne Swensson, “King County Baby Adoptions Increased 300 Pct. by War,” Seattle Times, February 10, 1944.

  34. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Esther Elbaum, March 1945, RRC, USHMM.

  35. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Caroline Ruelf, March 13, 1944, RRC, USHMM.

  36. Rappaport to Ruelf, March 13, 1944.

  37. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Ruth Reicher, March 1, 1944, RRC, USHMM.

  38. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Caroline Ruelf, March 13, 1944, RRC, USHMM.

  39. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Esther Elbaum, July 1944, RRC, USHMM.

  40. Rappaport to Elbaum, July 1944.

  41. Rappaport to Elbaum, July 1944.

  42. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Naomi Chertoff, September 14, 1944, RRC, USHMM. One reason for American support of Zionism was to ensure access to oil supplies in the Middle East.

  43. Letter from Hans Lemm (of the American Zionist Emergency Council) to Ruth Rappaport, August 11, 1944, RRC, USHMM.

  44. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Alice Bernstein Jacobson, October 7, 1944, RRC, USHMM.

  45. Letter from Alice Bernstein Jacobson to Ruth Rappaport and Marian Elyn, January 22, 1945, RRC, USHMM.

  46. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Esther Elbaum, circa March 1945, RRC, USHMM.

  47. “Request That Applicant Appear with Witnesses,” Immigration and Naturalization Service, February 21, 1945, RRC, USHMM.

  48. RR oral history, USHMM.

  49. RR oral history, USHMM.

  50. RR oral history, USHMM.

  CHAPTER 12

  1. “Now Japan! City Works on V-E Day,” Seattle Times, May 8, 1945, p. 1; “Victorious News Fails to Touch Off Riotous Celebrations Here,” Seattle Times, May 8, 1945, p. 8.

  2. DW staff, “Leipzig Celebrates Long Literary History,” DW, 2008, http://www.dw.com/en/leipzig-celebrates-long-literary-history/a-3185443.

  3. Letter from Alice Bernstein Jacobson to Ruth Rappaport, May 31, 1945, RRC, USHMM.

  4. Report from FBI special agent in charge (SAC), Seattle, to FBI director, October 17, 1951, Ruth Rappaport FBI file.

  5. Phillip Deery, “‘A Blot Upon Liberty’: McCarthyism, Dr. Barsky and the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee,” American Communist History 8, no. 2 (2009), pp. 167–96.

  6. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Esther Elbaum, June 1, 1945, RRC, USHMM.

  7. Letter from Esther Elbaum to Ruth Rappaport, June 5, 1945, RRC, USHMM.

  8. Mendel Rappaport records, International Tracing Service, OBE-RIW/1526, USHMM.

  9. Aileen Hicks Finley, “War Service Jobs Continue; Women Face Big Peace Tasks,” Seattle Times, August 19, 1945, p. 2.

  10. USS Annual Volunteer Recognition Day program, October 28, 1945, RRC, USHMM.

  CHAPTER 13

  1. Ruth Rappaport résumé, July 1948, personal documents, RRC, USHMM.

  2. Masthead, The Transcript, March 4, 1946, p. 4.

  3. Email from Ruth Rappaport to Sig Cohen, February 7, 2008, Sig Cohen personal collection.

  4. Ruth Rappaport University of Washington academic transcript, RRP, UW.

  5. American Society of Civil Engineers, “In Memoriam: Dr. Mohammad Gamal Mostafa,” Orange County Branch newsletter, August 2011, http://www.asceoc.org/newsletter/article/in_memoriam_mostafa.

  6. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to the Washington State Press Club, July 31, 1946, RRP, UW.

  7. “Ale & Quail Society Active in Host of Press Club Affairs,” Gentlemen of the Press, the newsletter of the Washington State Press Club, October 1951, http://www.jackgordon.org/WashPressClub/AleQuailHistory.htm.

  8. Letter from Dudley Brown to Ruth Rappaport, August 21, 1946, RRP, UW.

  CHAPTER 14

  1. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Jüdische Gemeinde zu Leipzig, July 8, 1946, Leipzig Jewish Community records (1933–1945), RG-14.035M, reel 41, USHMM.

  2. Letter from Jüdische Gemeinde zu Leipzig to Ruth Rappaport, August 27, 1946, RRC, USHMM.

  3. Guy Rosner, in discussion with the author, July 28, 2014.

  4. Michael Rubinstein, in discussion with the author, April 27, 2017.

  5. Ellen Bertram, Menschen ohne Grabstein [People with no gravestone], p. 288.

  6. Document 91706849 (60000/60300/0060399/2 Inbound/0002@6.3.3.2), International Tracing Service Archives, USHMM.

  7. Document 33461659 (/Image vorhanden/_R/R0095/07156@0.1), International Tracing Service Archives, USHMM.

  8. Document 91706835 (/60000/60300/0060398/3 Outbound/001@6.3.3.2) International Tracing Service Archives, USHMM.

  9. “Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1937–1945,” Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, https://www.buchenwald.de/en/72/.

  10. “Emil Carlebach—Lebenslauf,” politische Häftlinge im Gefängnis Hameln [Political prisoners in Hameln prison], Hamelns Geschichte—abseits vom Rattenfänger [Hameln’s story: away from the pied piper], http://www.gelderblom-hameln.de/zuchthaus/nszeit/gefaengnis/carlebach.html.

  11. Anders Rydell, The Book Thieves: The Nazi Looting of Europe’s Libraries and the Race to Return a Literary Inheritance (New York City: Viking, 2015), pp. 35–58.

  12. Restitution documentation records, RRC, USHMM.

  13. RR oral history, USHMM.

  CHAPTER 15

  1. RR diary, June 13, 1948.

  2. RR diary, December 26, 1948. Aziz Sedky, the future prime minister of Egypt, was probably Jim’s friend.

  3. January to September 1947 issues of The Transcript did not survive.

  4. “Carl Rubinstein,” Seattle Times, March 26, 1947, p. 20.

  5. “Carl Rubinstein Estate $540,000,” Seattle Times, March 31, 1947, p. 2.

  6. RR diary, May 28, 1928.

  7. “Bronner Speaks on Palestine,” Mill Valley Record, April 16, 1948, p. 10.

  8. Shilchim are emissaries from Israel.

  9. Email from Ruth Rappaport to Sig Cohen, February 7, 2008, Sig Cohen personal collection.

  10. Fred Rosenbaum, Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews in the San Francisco Bay Area (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), pp. 314–17.

  11. Benny Morris, 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 40–59.

  12. Patricia Bosworth, Anything Your Little Heart Desires: An American Family Story (New York City: Touchstone, 1997), pp. 173–206.

  13. Ruth Rappaport résumé, July 1948, personal documents, RRC, U
SHMM.

  14. Doreen Bierbrier, “The American Zionist Emergency Council: An Analysis of a Pressure Group,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 60, no. 1 (September 1970): p. 88.

  15. RR diary, June 13, 1948.

  16. Letter from Esther Elbaum to Ruth Rappaport, July 18, 1947, RRC, USHMM.

  17. Standard Form 57, 1960, Ruth Rappaport’s Official Personnel Folders, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Valmeyer, Illinois (additional sources from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Valmeyer, Illinois, are hereafter cited as from NARA).

  18. RR diary, May 28, 1948.

  19. Letter from Rabbi Franklin Cohn to Ruth Rappaport, September 2, 1947, RRC, USHMM. Sam Tarshis was the president of Seattle Zionist District.

  20. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Rabbi Franklin Cohn, September 9, 1947, RRC, USHMM.

  CHAPTER 16

  1. “ZOA Reorganizes S.F. District,” Jewish Tribune, October 17, 1947, p. 2.

  2. Letter from Rabbi Franklin Cohn to Ruth Rappaport, October 9, 1947, RRC, USHMM.

  3. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Rabbi Franklin Cohn, October 20, 1947, RRC, USHMM.

  4. “Balfour Day Observance Features Jackman, Goldberg,” Jewish Tribune, November 7, 1947, p. 1.

  5. “Zionist Leaders Signalize U.N. Decision,” Jewish Tribune, December 5, 1947, p. 2.

  6. Email from Ruth Rappaport to Sig Cohen, February 7, 2008, Sig Cohen personal collection.

  7. RR diary, August 10, 1948.

  8. “Yehudith Simchonit—Palestine Women’s Leader—to Speak,” Jewish Tribune, November 21, 1947, p. 1.

  9. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to Mrs. Allen, February 29, 1948, RRC, USHMM; letter from Ruth Rappaport to George Edelstein, December 26, 1948, RRC, USHMM.

  10. RR oral history, USHMM.

  11. Shulamit Reinharz and Mark A. Raider, American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005), p. 185.

  12. Reinharz and Raider, American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, pp. 185–86.

  13. RR diary, January 3–6, 1948.

  14. RR diary, January 3–6, 1948.

  CHAPTER 17

  1. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to “Whom It May Concern” regarding Mirjam Schneider’s will, undated, Peter Bartis personal collection.

  2. Ruth Rappaport to “Whom It May Concern” regarding Mirjam Schneider’s will.

  3. RR diary, April 23, 1948.

  4. Letter from Ruth Rappaport to W. Zev Bronner, February 3, 1948, RRC, USHMM.