Ruth Rosenberg

Ruth was just seven years old when she was part of Kristallnacht, she wouldn’t call herself a survivor, she felt ashamed to take away from the people that had a worse experience than her. Ruth and her parents immigrated to the United States in June 1942.

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transcript:

Hi, and welcome to the last generation. I'm Maddy Kramer in 2004, my grandma Sui passed away and I never got the chance to ask her how she survived the Holocaust growing up. She knew she was Hungarian. And then she survived the war, but not really how that impacted her life and how her own life impacted my mom's.

And even mine. I wish I had the chance to know her more, learn her language and really get to know her. Since 2017. I had an idea that I needed to bring families together, to have the chance to talk to the grandparents and ask all the questions I couldn. Because we are the last generation to get to know their stories for their.

You're gonna hear an accent because I was raised in Argentina where my grandma escape after the war, the season, we will listen to Holocaust survivors being asked questions by their grandkids. I hope you enjoy listening to these families, having the most wonderful conversations I loved every second of it.

This is episode one of the last generation podcasts in November, 2021. I had the chance to bring together IR growth and his grandchildren, Jamie, Aaron Talia, and Jessie, there was laughter crying and even great grandkids listening in the background. The most amazing thing is to listen to Irving's grandkids realizing that his own experience in the war changed their lives as well.

How each experience for each generation trigger goes into the next, when earring was 14 years old, he was captured by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz. Two years later on April 11th, 90, 45 earring was saved by the Americans. Sadly earring never saw his brother, grandparents, or cousin ever again. He reunited with his parents, Joseph and Helen.

I moved to Brooklyn in 1951 to restart his life. He became an engineer, a successful one. He got married and had two kids, four grandkids and eight great grandkids, the best revenge of all bringing more life to his world. He dedicated his life to telling his story to younger generations and teach about antisemitism.

this interview was recorded three months before he passed away. Okay. I'm gonna start if that's cool. Go right ahead. Let's see if this makes sense to start here. Um, how did going through the Holocaust shape your life and the way that you raised your children? Good question. What happened is that I became very, as a result of the Holocaust and my experience in it, I was very, um, attuned.

To listening what people are saying, what they're proposing. And if that idea goes to its limit, would that be good or bad for me? My children, my grandchildren, my people, my country. So it's that aspect of it to look at the reality, not what I interpreted as to be, but what they really are propos. So that it's very critical for me at this point, even is listening very, very carefully and then react, say, okay, this is going to end up as a wonderful thing.

So let me support it. Or this is going to end up being evil. Let me make sure I make a comment on it or tell my children about it or grandchildren and great grandchildren. How do you feel like you, you know, your experience of the Holocaust impacted your emotions, like dealing with sadness or fear, or just like any sort of intense emotions in your life?

Just cuz like I myself are not, not good at expressing myself emotionally. I just wonder like. How it kind of changed your dealings with emotions? Well, one of the aspects of emotions, I try to understand what's happening. It's really looking at things what's the worst possible thing can happen if such and such goes on, which bothers me.

What's the worst outcome. And is it really serious? If it is serious, I need to do something about it. But if the outcome is that I will not be able to have roast beef, all I'll be able to do is chicken breast. That's not the end of the world. So it's to weigh the emotional aspect because everything has an emotional aspect to us.

We, we influenced by it. But my feeling is that when I usually look. What's the worst thing that can happen as a result of this. Did you think about that during the war as well? Like when you were in the camps, did you think about what the worst case is? Or did you try not to think about that? Well, there, I, I knew what the worst things is, but by the time I was in Auschwitz as a 15 in a, as a, uh, 15 year old, yes.

I knew what the worst can happen. But I always said before that happens, is that anything I can do or influence the probability of survival? What can I do to medicate the worst? And I think that's, that's really, what's extremely important to me. And I hope I've given that idea to my children. And maybe even you guys cause the worst thing that can happen.

I'll miss the first two minutes of a Broadway show. It's not the end of the world. I'll catch up to it. So it becomes that aspect of it, knowing what the worst possible can happen. And if I don't want it to happen, what can I do? How can I mitigate it? Shouldn't happen. It's a great school of thought. Yeah. I wish I had more of that.

I need a little, I need a little, I need to really think about that more. We can completely, uh, control our emotions, but we can change it somewhat biologically thinking about what does it really mean in the real world and the real world is that you wanna live and you wanna live well. So. It's not gonna change, basically whether I wear a green shirt or a blue shirt, won't make the difference.

So my blue shirt is at the cleaners. It doesn't really matter.

You think that's why you're a survivor because you're able to see what's important and what's not, and how to keep living, even when they're really tough decision. Yeah, not everyone could be a survivor. Let's be serious. like, you're a remarkable person that you were able to survive. What you survived and be the way you are and not be negative or hateful or VE like kind of leads me to some of my other questions, but we'll get there.

But I mean, it's just. So many people going through that, even if they did survive or didn't like, you have to have something really special to survive and come out of it, wanting to teach and like make the world a better place and still raise your kids. Jewish and all of that. And that's just amazing, cuz there are a lot of people that just like, couldn't talk about it and you know, kind of denounced who they were because they didn't feel good about themselves after what they went through.

And it's just really, really incredible that you are. So like we should all aspire to be like you it's pretty, it's just amazing. And I wish. I was more like that every day. Sorry, I just wanted to put that in next question. Yeah. well, let's see. That's an interesting thing that you just brought up in terms of like Judaism and how much a part of your life it's become, or it is, and your family, and obviously like your two children.

Raised their kids differently when it came to Judaism, granted our parents have clearly gotten more religious as they've gotten happens to. Most of it seems. Yeah. Just in terms of like your decision process with, and just deciding how much Judaism you wanted in your kid's. And if the Holocaust had any impact on that at all, just like, did you wanna continue with this?

Was it super important? Well, one of the, um, aspects of my experience is the identity who I am the world when I was young. During that period of time, wanted to change me from a human being to a cockroach, to a nonexistent human. and that's something which I really fought against. And I suppose part of my survival has to do with just that, that I don't want to be controlled by somebody else.

And so to be, to be who I am, I grew up in a Jewish family, Judaism in my family, as I was growing up, uh, was an important part of. I mean Friday night and Saturday morning, I went to synagogue with my father or grandfather for that matter. Although going with my grandfather was much more fun. Cause with my father, I had to sit next to him and pray.

My grandfather would say, you can go outside and, you know, make your friends and play much easier going. But two days was part of my life, a, a Friday and night, deep minute dinner, a, a Passover Sayer. Those were important events in my life. And. Their part, what I am is I'm a Jew, I'm a human being. Uh, and therefore it's extremely important to me to remain what I am.

Cause I think as an individual and as a group, we each can, can and should contribute to society, didn't do humanity. I think I find that the fundamentals of Judaism really are the basis. What we call ideally. The Western civilization or the Judea Christian civilization, uh, because after all, if you look at particularly the first five books of Moses, uh, they have something very important to say, for instance, 36 times in those five volume, it says you shall not oppress oppress the stranger.

You shall love your neighbors yourself. You shall not steal you shall not murder. Are fundamental things to our society. You should not lie. Those are fundamentals to our society. And I think it's important to keep those things. And in a sense, I feel that this was given to the Jewish people, or they created it 2000 years ago or 3,500 years ago.

And it still applies today, which is to me. The same concept and ideals that were talked about two, 3000 years ago should still be valid. Now it, it's not a question of, uh, political correctness. It's fundamental. And I think as long as you live up to those, uh, particular foundations and fundamentals of humanity and moderation in many ways, and understanding the other and listening to the other, I think we can create a better society.

I do have a question on kind of on that religion topic. So it is interesting. That, that was kind of your takeaway from the Holocaust? I feel like I, I don't know, honestly, I mean, you've spoken to many more survivors than I have, but it's very easy kind of, for me to picture someone, having the experience that you had and coming out the other side saying like kind of blaming God and religion for that, and kind of having it, push them in the other direction.

So it's kind of interesting to me. I, I mean, is there something that you feel like kind of brought you closer specifically? I think in, in general, the, the, let me say this, when you blame, God means that you accept the existence of a God, whoever she may be. And so you accept that. If you accept that, the question is how did he allow to this to happen?

The answer is philosophically, at least to me, nature was established. Somebody by the big bang or by God or whatever you wanna do. We live in a natural world. And the question is what becomes, you know, if you look for miracles well, but they cannot go outside of nature. And so the, the miracle that I survived, it's even a bigger miracle than my parents survive.

No, it was in what actually did happen well for my parents, it meant that someone in Budapest was willing to take them into her house and protect them. A Christian woman that's miraculous because the number of people who did that, although some did, there are 25, 20 6,000 righteous. Gens remembered at the, at the

So the, the, the issue of, uh, being close to God or really the issue is how do you behave to another human being? Uh, because even in Naor says, life is not in heaven. Life is on earth. We don't know what's going to be there. If anything. But on earth we know, and we know that our actions with respect to each other result in good and bad.

And so my feel, my feeling is that the particular way I look at it, that I look at my particular set of beliefs are positive. You have to treat all your kids the same way. Now you sound like Bubi what's that. Now you sound like BU. That's right. And I think that's critical because you realize that when you do something, which tends to put bias into behavior, it can cause damage to other people.

So one needs to be careful. You need to be careful how you say it and what you say. That's why as you write as you are right for Bobby, it was the oldest favorite grandchild. Then the next favorite grandchild and. The youngest favorite is grandchild. So that's, that's really a, a me very powerful message. I agree.

I love being the youngest. Favorite granddaughter. I love being the oldest favorite granddaughter smack in the middle of, I can mean the favorite grandson really got it. You really cold in there? on this sometimes. Go ahead. did you ever feel like a victim or how did you push yourself to not feel like a victim after going through what you went through?

And like, I'm also because like you, you know, it wasn't like that. You know, everyone in your family survived. Like we know you lost your brother. Like, I, if something happened to my sister, I would a hundred percent feel like a victim. Like I, that this happened. Like, unfortunately that's just the way I would feel.

And I know like it's something I would have to work on, but I don't know how, and maybe you did at first. And I just don't know how you were able to kind of get past feeling like a victim and just be like a better, you know, like, I, I would love for you to like, talk about that process and like what you felt in, in a.

I look at it like a ball game, you have a ball game and you're on one team and somebody else in the other team and you lose a ball game. Right. But that's the only, that's not the only ball game that you will ever play that game. You didn't do too well. But the next time you can win justice may, actually did, will take place.

And that's the way I see it. And there's another piece which I say it, but I hope you understand it the way I'm trying to explain. There are people who have, who do bad things to other people. Sometimes it's a boss sometimes who knows a friend betrays you all that stuff, but you wanna play the game you wanna live.

You wanna continue to live. And my living am I loving and creating in a sense is revenge in a way, the ultimate revenge. There are people who wanted me to become a Verman who looked at me as Verman. I didn't think of myself as such, and they treated me as such, but fortunately I survived and I'm not a Verman.

I am not a victim. Yes. At one point I had no power to do anything about anything. Every decision that I. I didn't make all of life was totally controlled, but let, let me give you a particular moment. Cause somebody asked me once Kip, what did you do in Auschwitz? And the answer is I fasted the kind of nutty idea.

You were living on some black liquid called coffee and some soup and a piece of bread and you'd fast. Well, that's a decision I could still make. That's the only decision I could really make. And because I am a Jew and because this is part of my heritage I am going do and can control that. So I want be in control of my own destiny.

And in order to do that, you have to pick yourself up after the ball game and go home. Cry as you into your beer for a while, but then you have to get up and continue you get up and do it there. There's, you know, there's no point, uh, things happen and you live with them, but you try to change it for the next time.

So I look at my life from the very beginning when I was a little boy and lived in a wonderful country, parents and grandparents and all that stuff. And that was great. And I look today and I have my great grandchildren, six of them all wonderful, beautiful Bri course. Brilliant. We understand. Uh, and, and so it's the love to be thankful for in a way it's revenge against evil.

What are your hopes and wishes for your children and your children's children and their children? Well, first and foremost, I hope that my great-grandchildren have the same opportunities that I had first. And for that they can live in freedom and harmony with their environment, with their fellow human beings, beats that they set for themselves goals, which are attainable and achievable.

And every time you set a new goal, I hope they achieve it, but I hope they don't stop. There's always the next goal. And I hope that never will. They have to live in a dictatorship that they'll be able to live in harmony with their fellow human being and the environment. The objective is to a better life and easier life and more joyous life.

Our children, great grandchildren and made that come soon. And in the meantime, I'll do everything. We hopefully together soon. Absolutely. Only together. Can we succeed? I just wanna like, when, cuz you didn't always talk about the Holocaust, this might be a long long-winded but when did you start talking about it and like what made you feel suddenly comfortable or feel like you had to start or like maybe that you had to start talking about it to your family and to anyone really mm-hmm OK.

I'll tell you that there are two moments really of. Really three moments, uh, because when I came to the United States, uh, uncle Harry, and most of you never met uncle Harry. Um, he was a wonderful man, but he did not know much, but he, I don't think he knew much about psychology. Uh, when I got here, he says, what happened in Europe?

What happened to you that a sink into the ocean? Let's forget the whole thing. He meant. Because he wanted me to startle over again and over, and then I started school. And the first time that I really spoke about it to anyone was in school. Cause somebody decided to write an article on the Holocaust when I was in high school.

And it's an interesting article cause I remember what came up, but the interview was what came out of it. The next time really was when your father. We're about seven, eight years old was summertime and they saw something particular peculiar in a way. They saw a tattoo on my arm and I began to explain, yeah, when they were five years old, I told them it was your, your mother's telephone number as they became 10 years old.

I realized it's not because the wrong number of numbers . So I began telling him little bits and pieces. and as a result of it, as you know, uh, when you went to school, you bring things from home to school, you have show and tell, and they told in the classroom about some of the stuff that happened to me, the teacher didn't quite believe all of it.

So she called me and I told her yes, and I was invited to come to speak. And so he's elementary school, middle school and high school students. I spoke. One teacher told another teacher one, they told the mother's school. And so slowly it began to evolve that I spoke to schools about 40 years ago, 35 years ago, Bob and I were in a, at a, with one of our friends and at the dinner was their new son-in-law who happened to be in a rabbi at, uh, temple Sinai.

In Rosalin and we talked and he said to me, wow, you, you, you were there. See, he says, would you come and speak in my congregation? So my first talk to general public was about 35, 40 years ago. And the rest is history. I had to ask that question. I don't think I ever knew any of that. And that's pretty amazing.

Yeah. Well, as I said, Mary wants to make sure that you understand that when I started speaking to your parents, your fathers, uh, because they wanted to know what that numbers on my arm. And so I slowly began to give them enough information for them to begin to understand and feel, uh, but, uh, with Bob's.

Understanding of psychology. Uh, I limited to things that could absorb and not give them nightmares. And I still do that. Uh, when I speak to, uh, fifth graders, it's not quite the same as when I speak to, uh, adults, it's the same story, but you try to do it differently from educational perspective and as you, well, Bobby was a very intelligent person who also knew a lot about psychology and certainly about early childhood.

So I learned that's because she used early childhood ideas on me. But our whole 60 years that we were together, what do you think drove Jews to be so motivated to be successful value education? Like, you know, it might have started before the Holocaust, but having gone through the Holocaust, not having opportunity, having.

You know, after the Holocaust ended and what made Jews like persevere? Like why are we so motivated to like, do so much and do so well after? I mean, you know, a part of it might be because of what happened, but, you know, it's just interesting to think about, well, I guess, because we think of ourselves as, and this is again, theologically in a way, uh, I look upon humans as partners to.

Partners to God. So the worth the earth was here for a few million years and then appears, man, that's me. You and man has a very, uh, interesting ability and that is to speak. And to influence others. But at the same time, we are told to live in harmony. Now, one of the things we need to do is develop a vaccine because we are now in a position the whole world where there's something in nature through some mutation has attacked us.

So our job is to live on this globe by inventing, but making things easier today, we have about seven and a half billion people living on this earth yet when there were less than a billion. The earth was able to supply the food and nourishment and transportation for all of them. And lo and behold, with seven and a half billion, we still can't do it, but we can do it because we can create because technology has helped us.

And, and so I see that as a marvelous thing. Now, today we are on zoom. When I started in engineering, the idea of zoom wasn't was like science fiction. So individual people contributed a lot to way we function today. There was in the 1850s, there was a man by the name of Hertz who figured out how you can put intelligence.

On a radio frequency carrier. That's how come we can do what we're doing, uh, drew in Germany who showed that you can put on a carrier on a radio frequency signal, not just saying dots and dashes, which preceded that. So, but you can do more than that. That's what drives me. I find it very exciting. Even at my age, I find things exciting.

That's good. that's great. And above. To see and feel that my great-grandchildren will know that I existed, that their grandchildren will know. I existed. That's exciting. I once told, uh, you know, uncle, I told him once when, when, uh, his son was born now, when his grandson was born or granddaughter, I remember which one was first.

I think grandson, I said, you have achieved a milestone in your life, said, what is that? I see you have a project you will remain alive, not physically, but things you've done things you give to your children and grandchildren. You'll continue from generation to generation. So in a sense, morally intellectually, so wise.

You will continue to exist, which I think is exciting. So on that note, guys for a wonderful evening, and we'll now see if I can get something to eat, have a good time. The last generation podcast is created by Matt Kramer produced by pickle music, New York. With Nicole Las Marelli, I'm Marco, Tonya. I want to thank Diana Kramer to help us find these remarkable survivors and their families stay tuned for the next episode, to hear the remarkable story of Simon GKI that he says the music save his life during the Holocaust.

This is a last generation podcast, a podcast for the oldest and voices to tell stories that live on.