When I was asked to be the grand marshal of the Steuben Parade here in New York—a celebration by German Americans—I paused once again to decide whether or not it was appropriate to accept this honor. You’ll find me at every Israel Day Parade, not to mention the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, so it wasn’t as if I were suffering from some sort of parade deficit. And there was no doubt that for me to lead this particular parade was something that some members of the Jewish community wouldn’t understand. But to not accept was like saying that all Germans are inherently evil. As a Jew who actively stands against anti-Semitism, how could I refuse based on the same sort of logic that I so despise? So I marched at the head of that parade and had a fabulous time.
It was a gorgeous sunny September day. They’d placed a picture of me on flags attached to the lampposts all along Fifth Avenue, and it gave me a big smile each time we walked by one. Plus I had two police detectives assigned to me the whole time. They’d picked me up at home, and on the drive to the start of the parade, I had them put the siren on their unmarked car. (Shhh—don’t tell the police commissioner or they might get into trouble.) I walked up Fifth Avenue, with the expensive apartment buildings on one side and Central Park on the other; thousands of people were waving at me and calling out, “Dr. Ruth, Dr. Ruth!” I waved back, checking out the crowds on both sides in case I should spot someone I know. When we arrived at the reviewing stand, I was actually a little sad to stop walking, as it meant an end to the accolades I was getting.
Imagine missing out on an opportunity to receive such an outpouring of admiration because of events that took place seventy years before. The passing years don’t diminish what happened in the least, but if the people honoring me weren’t even born, they certainly played no role. And if we are to prove Hitler wrong—that no race is superior or inferior—then we have to treat everyone equally, and that goes for all the German people born since World War II.
I am also on very friendly terms with the Swiss community here in New York. The last three Swiss counsel generals have invited me to the official residence many times, either just for dinner or to attend a concert they’re hosting. And I’m a regular at the annual Swiss Ball, at which a good part of the community gets together to celebrate their heritage. Again, my feelings toward the Swiss are mixed. On the one hand, they saved my life, and I will always be grateful for that. But I can’t help to think of all the other German Jewish children whom they weren’t willing to take, and I wasn’t treated very well while I was there (and this was by Swiss Jews, no less). When the war was over, I was forced to leave. I don’t know that I would have wanted to stay, but the decision wasn’t mine to make. We were refugees, and now that the fighting was over, we were expressly told that the time had come to go elsewhere. But if the Swiss want to treat me like a celebrity today, then why not enjoy myself? There’s that expression, “to cut off your nose to spite your face,” and not accepting the welcome I’m given today by the Swiss because I wasn’t allowed to attend classes in the 1940s would be a prime example of that. Plus, I go to Switzerland almost as often as I go to Israel. Mostly it’s because I have some dear friends who live there, but also, hiking in the Swiss Alps is a favorite of mine—not to mention Swiss chocolates! While it’s one thing to have a good time with Germans or Swiss, though, nothing compares to celebrating with my fellow Jews, especially those who were with me in Switzerland. When we get together—and we’re all rather old now—and we spend hours dancing to traditional Israeli folk songs, what’s showing through is our joie de vivre. Because each of us came close to dying along with the rest of our families, we all have this drive to make the most of the days we have left. Compare us to the usual high school reunion and you have joie de vivre in 3-D surround sound.
One reason for our cohesion is that we had a common enemy. Everyone has a teacher who was universally disliked, but we had Fraulein Riesenfeld, who surpasses those others in just about every way. On the first day we arrived in Heiden, I watched as she stole the chocolate bar my grandmother had placed in my suitcase. She told us that once we went upstairs to bed, we couldn’t come back down. The bathroom was downstairs, and knowing you couldn’t go to the bathroom made the need to go that much worse. So, of course, several times I wet the bed, as did others. Not only did she embarrass us in front of the other children by making us wash our sheets, but she then ordered us to write about it to our parents. But far worse than any of her day-to-day cruelty, she actually told us—not just me, but all the children—that our parents were snakes, animals who eat their young, because they’d sent us away. Can you get any meaner? (One time I saw her slip on the ice. I laughed and laughed. I got spanked, but it was well worth it.)
When you’ve shared being under the domination of someone like Fraulein Riesenfeld, with no place to go for relief, no loving family to turn to, if nothing else it builds a sense of community. We couldn’t turn to our parents, so we turned to each other. We created bonds that were tough enough to last a lifetime. But when we get together, we aren’t bitter. We don’t cry about what happened. Instead we find ways of making each other laugh. Once you learn to squeeze some fun out of what really are sour lemons, that’s a skill you never lose. You learn not to dwell on what’s horrible in your life because you’ve come face-to-face with real horror and know that’s a place you don’t want to revisit. You look for the good that life has to offer rather than make petty complaints.
Of course, I wasn’t alone in that school/orphanage in Heiden. Is there maybe something in my genetic code that made me stand out from all the other children there? That’s a good question—and believe it or not, I have an answer to it, because I wondered the same thing myself. For my master’s dissertation at the New School, I did a study of the other children who were with me. Several years later, with the help of a famous Swiss journalist, I did more digging, which eventually turned into my first book, Die Geschichte der Karola Siegel (The Story of Karola Siegel). I’m not going to go into detail of what was written in that book, as you’re already in the middle of another of my books, but I confirmed the basic point that because all of us had come from loving, solid families before Hitler came to power, we’d all been given a solid foundation on which to grow into useful and productive citizens. Despite becoming orphans and having to survive some tough years in Heiden, none of us dropped out of society or became addicts. We all were able to create and support families of our own. Our roots had taken hold, and we were all able to overcome the hardships of those years—perhaps scarred, but not terminally damaged.
That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of successful people whose very early life started out in substandard conditions, but who despite their past were able to pull themselves up by those proverbial bootstraps. The difference between them and our group is that they were the exceptions; many of those around them were not able to overcome those initial disadvantages. But I wasn’t the exception of our own group (OK, most didn’t become famous but that’s not how I define success). Rather, we all managed to thrive after the war ended.
The lesson that I want you to draw from this is that if you had a strong foundational childhood, then you too have a background on which you can draw enormous strength. If you’re facing a problem, don’t tell yourself that you can’t do it. Convince yourself that you have the strength to deal with almost anything because of the way you were raised. And you do! Recognizing your core strengths is an important step toward having joie de vivre. You can count on better days to come because of the good days that came before. And you can find joy in the moment because you have the resiliency to overcome the problems that may be hanging over you.
Another side of my life that has played a strong role is faith. Yes, there’s religious faith, but here I’m talking about faith in yourself. If your background didn’t provide you with the solid foundation that those of us in Heiden had been given by our families, you still need a foundation to hang on to, and in such cases you have to make it yourself. You have to believe tha
t you have the abilities to get ahead. That’s not to say that there won’t be days when that faith is shaken, because it will be. When you fail badly, you’ll wonder if you have what it takes. But you have to learn how to bounce back.
When I was severely wounded—a story we’ll get to—I wasn’t certain I’d ever walk again. But I forced myself to find the courage that I needed. One of my motivations was that I’d lost my family and it was my duty to carry on. Was I actually under any pressure to succeed on their behalf? Of course not; they were gone from this earth. But I used that logic to rally my forces. So if you can’t find a foundation to lean on in the obvious places, such as your immediate family, then come up with another. It could be religion, it could be other relatives, a favorite teacher, your country, your race—the possibilities are endless. By convincing yourself that you’re not acting alone, no matter how lonely you may feel, you’ll be able to find the strength you need through this faith you’ve developed. If you don’t believe me, think of all the soldiers who’ve run headfirst into battle, risking their lives to protect their country. Their faith gave them the necessary courage. You too can find a similar source of faith to get you through dark times.
CHAPTER III
Embrace Your Passions and Your Beliefs
There was a time when America’s most famous celebrities hid their Jewish origins, people such as Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch) or Lauren Bacall (born Betty Joan Perske). And some still do today—or at least, they keep it quiet, as they feel that being part of the Jewish minority might hinder a career in show business. But my career goals never were to be a celebrity; the only reason I dropped my last name (to the extent that I go by Dr. Ruth instead of Dr. Ruth Westheimer) was because people had a hard time remembering it and saying it on radio. I have always been very proud of being Jewish. I certainly suffered enough for my religious beliefs that for me, to try to hide being Jewish would have done nothing more than hand a partial victory to Hitler. So the fact that I am Jewish does not come as a surprise to most people. But my past does contain some surprises. What’s the biggest one? German—not a surprise. Grandmother—not a surprise. Sniper—definitely a surprise!
When it was time to leave Switzerland, I had to decide where to relocate. Did I want to go back to Germany? After what had happened there, absolutely not. But if my parents or other family members were possibly alive, I knew beyond every shadow of doubt the first thing they would do is come look for me. And where would they start searching? One logical place was back in Frankfurt. That’s where they last saw me, and potentially they had belongings there. If I were them, that’s where I would have gone. So if I moved anywhere else but Frankfurt, how would they find me? Granted, by this time I knew enough about the Holocaust that the odds of them being alive were small. But these were my parents; even the smallest odds were something to hold on to. So what should have been a relatively easy decision—to go to Palestine—in fact became gut wrenching. To some degree, my decision made me feel like I was abandoning my family. Wasn’t my duty to return to the apartment where we had lived and wait for them to possibly show up? My only consolation was that Palestine was probably the second place they’d look for me. But still, as I made my way there, the thought that this move might mean never seeing my parents or grandparents again weighed heavily on me.
When I got to Palestine, I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to give up my German first name, Karola. Anything German was considered tainted, and it didn’t matter that it was the name my dear parents had given me. But if my parents were looking for me and thought of looking in Palestine, how would they find me if I changed my name? I arrived at half a solution, inverting my first and middle names, becoming Ruth Karola from Karola Ruth, rationalizing that it would make it easier for my parents to locate me. But the truth was that with this gesture, I was not just losing the identity I’d had for my entire life; I was also lessening the chances that any of my family might ever find me. So now I was adding a layer of guilt to what was already a painful exercise of becoming Ruth.
All these thoughts would never have occurred to me if I’d had some remains or a cemetery plot to visit. Not having that type of evidence left me with an open wound that never completely healed. I still sometimes dream of finding my parents. My experience allows me to better understand the emotions of the families of those who perished in 9/11 and other tragedies, where no remains are ever found. That hope—that maybe your loved one escaped, is maybe in a hospital in a coma, or lost his or her memory and is living a new life—always remains. Mourning is an important human activity for restoring mental health, in every sense of the phrase. Those of us who can’t fully experience these emotions have a hard time coming fully to grips with the loss.
Each of us in the orphanage dealt with this loss in a different way. I witnessed one example of that with a boy that I liked, Walter (aka Putz), when he was ordered into the office of the evil Fraulein Riesenfeld. Knowing she’d be up to no good and seeing that the door was slightly ajar, I stood outside listening and watching.
“Walter, we have gotten word that there is a record of your parents being sent to Buchenwald. They are not among the survivors.” Walter said nothing. He looked past Fraulein Riesenfeld, and then he started to laugh. He laughed harder and harder until Fraulein Riesenfeld slapped him. I’d had enough at that point. I pushed the door open and ran in, shouting, “Don’t touch him! I got a letter from my father! He and my mother and grandmother are safe in Tel Aviv! My father has a job on a farm! We have a little house all to ourselves! Walter can come with me! Everyone can come with me!”
Fraulein Riesenfeld burst that balloon, snarling at me, “Karola, I never read that letter.” It wasn’t a serious fantasy of mine. I’d made it up on the spur of the moment because seeing Walter laugh like that made me instinctively want to protect him. But as much as I wanted to offer him a life preserver at that moment, the truth was that we were all drowning in our sorrow.
Many of us headed to Palestine. When I first arrived there, I worked on a kibbutz for a time, then went to Jerusalem to learn to be a kindergarten teacher. Then the War of Independence broke out in 1948, and we Jews were at risk of losing our homeland. I wasn’t about to let that happen, so I volunteered for the underground. There were several such paramilitary groups, but the largest was the Haganah, which is the one I joined.
As a four-foot-seven woman, I would have been turned away by any self-respecting army anywhere else in the world, but there weren’t very many Jews in Palestine at that time (or anywhere, for that matter, given what the Nazis had done to our people). And there were a lot of Arabs in the countries all around us looking to prevent a Jewish state from forming. So it was all hands on deck, even those for whom it was tough to find what might pass for a uniform that fit. Though my sex and size might not have qualified me, it turns out I had other qualities that made me a valuable guerrilla.
The first thing I was taught was how to take apart and put back together a machine gun with my eyes closed. I’m not sure how useful a skill that is, though I suppose if your gun jams during a fight in the middle of the night, you’d be glad to know what to do. In any case, I became quite proficient—it was drilled into me so strongly that if you placed one of those guns in my hands today, I bet I could do it all over again, though I might have to cheat and pull the blindfold aside.
They gave us some training in how to shoot and then I was sent out to the range and handed a rifle that was about as big as I was. It wasn’t all that easy to handle standing up, but I was instructed to lie on my belly in the hot sand and fire at a target hundreds of yards away. I was fumbling around, trying to find the right position to align my eye with the gun’s sight, when the instructor came up behind me.
“Siegel, what’s the problem?”
“I can’t find a comfortable position,” I said, squirming around on the ground like a dog looking to find just the right orientation to begin a nap.
“Maybe I could bring you a pillow? The Hag
anah has a large supply. Above all, we want our fighters to be comfy.”
“I’m trying very hard, but I’ve never done this before,” I said, feeling a little sorry for myself.
“Here, let me give you something better than a pillow. See that target out there? Pretend Adolf Hitler is standing behind it and his heart is right where the red circle is. See if that doesn’t make it easier.”
And it did. My emotional state changed in an instant. Instead of wallowing in misery, I felt a surge of adrenaline. Finally, I had my chance to get even with the man who had destroyed my family, even if it was only inside my head. The rifle scope hurt my cheek and the sand was getting inside my blouse, but I didn’t care. I aimed, squeezed the trigger slowly as I had been taught, and fired off five bullets. And they all went into that red circle!
It turned out that I have a knack for putting bullets exactly where I want them to go. It’s not like I had practiced playing cowboys and Indians back in Frankfurt, but for some reason, if you put a gun in my hands and a target in front of me, I’ll drill those bullets right through the middle of it. And I have never lost that talent. I once took my grandson Ari to a country fair. He challenged my stories about having been a sniper as we stood in front of one of those shooting galleries where you can win prizes if you hit the target—though few do, because it’s a lot harder than it looks. We came home with a dozen stuffed animals and a goldfish in a plastic bag full of water. My daughter was annoyed with me because she didn’t know where she would put all my winnings!
The Doctor Is In Page 3