When I looked at myself through “German eyes” I feel very low.
I smoke too much
I have a crazy modern hairdo
I wear fake jewelry15
Even though she enjoyed her new job, she knew it wasn’t satisfying and that she couldn’t work there long term. A few months later she wrote of her ambitions for the future:
I am always dreaming about doing something with my life, but I am lacking a plan. Today I had the thought that I would like to become a libraryan [sic]. If I can summon up enough energy to work for this, and to use the money that I earn better, perhaps I could take a course in “library work”! […] I don’t want to spend my entire life in a vacuum cleaner business.16
Clearly, both the Zurich and Seattle public libraries had left a lasting imprint on her. When she visited to pick up books or to read and lounge in a space that was not one of her uncles’ homes, she must have noticed and admired the librarians there. They would have been single, educated women, and perhaps they exuded a sense of satisfaction with their work. This dream would not become a reality for Ruth for another seventeen years, but the seeds were planted when she was eighteen years old, if not earlier. In this same diary entry, Ruth listed her eleven goals to improve herself, including “to speak more concisely and precisely” in English and “to do some intellectual work and to read serious books.” She concluded:
To become my own person and to keep my sights on what is written in my poetry album:
Your life is your battle,
Your peace a victory.17
More than a year earlier, on New Year’s Day 1941, Ruth had decided that she wanted a boyfriend who would take her out dancing. She wrote, “Rationally, I am still against an American ‘boyfriend,’ but emotionally I long for one.”18 Although she chafed at her aunt’s efforts to send her “off to market,” Ruth started going on dates but was not seriously interested in any one boy. She still pined for Roger and wondered what he was up to in Zurich. One of her first dates in Seattle was with a man named Larry, a double date set up by her friend Mila so they could all go to Seattle’s Russian Ball. Ruth knew that he was a Christian and married, and she tried to mumble his name when introducing him to her aunt and uncle so they would not suspect he wasn’t Jewish. By 1942 she was not at all seriously interested in Larry, but the experience made her think about Christian men differently and question the stereotypes she had acquired about them:
Sometimes I have asked myself whether I would go out with young Christian men—and I thought now—because I have always imagined Christian boys to be only rougher, coarser […] rather brutal and backward—full of male intentions, simply a Goy—without Jewish background—and when I saw Larry Fealham, 100% Aryan—how did I like him? Better than most Jewish young men—how determined he was—simply wonderful. I simply do not think that the Jews are better.19
Ruth explained how she was sexually harassed at least a few times. She met the brother of a Mrs. Schneider, Kurt Hamlet, who asked her out to dinner. She described how he groped her on this date, but she resisted and left. She fumed, “If he needs a whore, he should go downtown and buy one for money.”20 Mrs. Sarkowsky’s husband, Irving, also groped Ruth. She wrote:
Mr. Sarkowsky—a married man with 3 sons—every time he can get me alone he takes me in his arms and presses me to him so hard that I am afraid he is going to break my entire body, and then he tries to kiss me—and to pass his thick hands under my dress—it has already happened 2 times, and I do not know what I should do—because it happens only when I am alone at home—and he is so strong that I can’t do anything about it—and he is also such a good friend to Uncle and Aunt—if they only knew how he bothers me—and his wife—she is an example of a fine lady—and I hate him more than I do anyone else.21
But Ruth dated several other men who greatly respected her, and she enjoyed spending time with them. When she met Felix Gruenthal, another émigré from Germany, she was surprised to learn that he also had spent time in Zurich and had even known the Herzogs, the second family she had stayed with. Ruth wrote of when they first met, “Strange, how it sometimes goes—you speak 2 or 3 words and feel like old friends.” They had a “European evening,” as she put it, filled with interesting conversation but no necking.22 After a few dates, she invited him home to meet her aunt and uncle and observed, “Funny, everyone thinks that Felix is my ‘boyfriend’ and that I am his ‘girlfriend’—and that we are ‘going out’ together. And the strangest part of the entire thing is that everyone—boys and girls, as soon as they know that you have a ‘boyfriend’ they behave entirely differently towards you.”23 But she was certainly willing to admit, “I like him a lot!”
Young men and women were streaming into Seattle, both as workers for war industry jobs (especially at Boeing, which was building new bomber airplanes), and as newly enlisted troops waiting to ship out to the Pacific. Ruth’s friends from Germany had to obey the new curfew, but because Ruth had her Romanian passport, she was not classified as a suspicious alien.24 The young people she had met in high school and at Herzl’s Congregation Synagogue were now scattering across the country and the world. Her cousin Sam left to join the Army Air Forces and would become a second lieutenant specializing in bombsight maintenance in the Pacific.25 Ruth went to dances at the USO and took photographs with men in their uniforms. In one group of poignant photos from April 1943, she and a friend, Esther L
owinger, goofed around among the cherry blossoms of Green Lake Park with Esther’s husband, named Richard, and Mike Perlgut, both in uniform.
Although dances and parties could distract her sometimes, the reality of the war hit home each time she listened to the news on the radio or read in Hadassah Magazine of the atrocities committed against Jews. And even though she had fled the Nazis as a persecuted Jew, she still was saddened by the news that America and England were now bombing Germany. She wrote in anger:
My entire life strikes me as being so false—everyone so deceitful—how can an educated person rejoice that England bombed Cologne—the city of Cologne didn’t want the war—it is the people who wanted war—it simply pains me to see the city walls destroyed—“fighting” for the country naturally, I would say that the United States has won—but it seems such a waste and so senseless, there must be another way out from this chaos—I simply can’t condone the war my parents are suffering in Germany—Papa’s sisters in Poland and Romania, Clara, Salomon, and Guy in France, my sister in Palestine, and I sit here every day afraid that I will get news that they are already dead.26
Chapter 11
The summer of 1942 would bring new opportunities that would both energize Ruth and give her some solace. Two years earlier she had joined Junior Hadassah, a division of Hadassah, the Zionist group founded by the American Jewish woman Henrietta Szold. A worldwide organization, Hadassah (also known as the Women’s Zionist Organization of America) initially raised money for the Hadassah Hospital in Palestine but soon branched out to provide funds for immigration to the country, the American war effort in World War II, and educational opportunities for Jews worldwide. Ruth became more involved in Junior Hadassah when the West Coast division of the group held a conference in Seattle in July. Ruth was selected convention chairwoman and planned much of the conference. She gave the welcome speech at the Friday night dinner at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel and introduced the invited speaker, Dr. James, who spoke on racism and anti-Semitism and encouraged attendees to think hard about their own prejudices. But more importantly that night, Ruth was reunited with a rabbi she had met years ago, when her Habonim group in Leipzig had taken a trip to the neighboring town of Gera. For the Habonim group, it was the first time these teenagers had “met a rabbi who was strong, Zionist, and understood the problems of young people.”1
This rabbi was Fritz Cohn, but he now went by the name Franklin. After his stint in Gera, he had lived in Berlin for three years, trying to help Jewish children get out of Germany. In 1939, with his wife and two-year-old daughter, he escaped to New York, where he lived with his brother and sold ties until he found a position at a synagogue in Walla Walla.2 Rabbi Cohn spoke at the conference that weekend and inspired the West Coast women of Junior Hadassah with his songs (some of which Ruth remembered from Gera), humor, and deep belief in Zionism. Later he helped the women write their resolutions and gave a special speech for the new officers, which included Ruth. She had just been elected the Pacific-coast regional secretary and the treasurer of the Seattle branch.3
Two weeks later, Ruth explained how this convention dramatically changed her life:
When I then became “Convention Chairwoman,” I really hoped that I would meet more people that way. But I was entirely overwhelmed with how many people I really got to meet!
1. I know many more people than I did before and if you asked other people what they thought of me it would be “she is an active girl, good worker, ran the convention,” etc.
2. Although it is just a small thing, and I shouldn’t pay much attention to it, it nevertheless doesn’t make any difference. I saw my picture in the newspaper, which naturally amounts to a lot of people having respect for me—and not to go on being as disrespected as I was before, rather more, should I say, “personality” or a small “big shot.” The whole change in my current “social life” is in part probably due to this mention of me and also my having changed somewhat. I step out more self-confidently, am not as timid, talk to everyone and do things as if I know what I am doing.4
Just before the conference, Ruth’s uncle Carl had asked Ruth if she had heard of a Rabbi Franklin Cohn. Looking back on the strange coincidence, she explained:
One of my uncles was the President of the Conservative Synagogue…. and their rabbi was leaving and they were looking for a replacement. This is where it gets funny….uncle comes home one night for dinner and asks me if while in Germany had I ever heard of a Rabbi Franklin Cohn! I nearly laughed in his face…. nothing seemed funnier at the time than to think of a German Jewish Rabbi to be named Franklin…. however, common sense took over and I suggested he ask the applicant if his name was Fritz Cohn and if he ever had a congregation in a little town not far from Leipzig called Gera. It so happened, as a ten-year-old I was impressed with a Rabbi Fritz Cohn, you won’t believe this, because he rode a bicycle…. and he used to take some of us kids on Sunday morning bicycle trips instead of having Sunday school! And lo and behold…. yes indeed…. he was the guy who applied for the vacancy and obviously, how could uncle resist my good common sense and my persuasive powers…. and he got the job!5
Ruth was thrilled that Franklin would now be the rabbi of Herzl’s Congregation Synagogue. Less than a year earlier, she had described her disgust with the former rabbi and synagogue leadership: “I simply could not understand how these grownups could stand up and speak in front of 300 people about a God in which I haven’t believed in 10 years and then speak praises and bless each other, and tell people who have absolutely no clue to stand up and say something in order to seem important.”6
Cohn would soon become a mentor and a father figure. He seemed to be the only adult in Seattle who really understood her. Ruth confided in him about how sad she was that she didn’t fit in with the Rubinsteins, especially her aunt Dora: “I told Rabbi Cohn all the things that are going on with me. It could be good—and it could be not so good—in any case, if anyone can understand me, it is Cohn—and if I can speak openly to anyone, it’s also him.”7 Less than two weeks later, she wrote about how nice it was that her aunt was being friendlier. She asked Cohn if he had spoken to her, and indeed he had. Ruth wrote, “In any case, it seems to have helped! Who knows for how long?”8