Ruth Juras

Location 
Hirtenstraße 18
Historical name
Hirtenstraße 21
District
Mitte
Stone was laid
21 May 2022
Born
04 December 1920 in Berlin
Occupation
Krankenpflegerin
Escape
10. Mai 19139 nach England
Survived
This is the story of Ruth Juras' escape from the Holocaust. However, the word escape is wholly inadequate to describe her experience, given all that she lost and left behind and all the pain she endured as a result.

Ruth was born in Berlin in 1920, shortly after the First World War. Ruth's primary education was at a Jewish public school near Kaiserstrasse. German education policy made public funds available for both Jewish and non-Jewish schools. In this environment, in addition to her secular education, she also received an introduction to her Jewish heritage and traditions. In 1930, at the age of 10, she applied to the Sophien-Lyzeum, a private girls' high school on Weinmeisterstrasse, where she was accepted. To get a higher education in Germany it was necessary to attend a Gymnasium, and this school had affordable tuition, so Ruth was enrolled. The student body was predominantly non-Jewish, with Jewish students making up only about ten percent of the students. Since no traditional Jewish subjects were taught, Ruth also attended a supplementary Hebrew school.

It was jokingly said about the Jewish middle class in pre-Hitler Germany that every boy received violin lessons and every girl piano lessons. Whether this is true or not, Ruth started learning the piano when she was 11 and practiced on the piano in the apartment until she was 14 or 15 years old. All in all, the time from Ruth's childhood to Hitler's rise to power was happy and joyful and also full of hope and positive expectations for the future.

Although Hitler's Nazis became active throughout Germany soon after World War I, they did not come to power until January 1933, when Hitler took over the chancellorship and the dictatorial regime began almost immediately. This date marks the great turning point for German Jews, as anti-Jewish propaganda intensified and became more vicious and discriminatory legislation and government policies were instituted. The life of the Jews in Germany became miserable with the intensification of anti-Jewish policies and legislation.

As it was for the Jews in Germany, so it was for Ruth's family. This period of deteriorating living conditions left its mark on Ruth during her early and middle teens. In 1935, like the other Jewish students at the Lyceum, she had to sit at the back of the classroom, separated from non-Jewish students. By 1935 her family could no longer afford the school fees for the Sophien Lyceum due to the Nazi-led boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Like almost all other Jewish students, she had to drop out of school, much to her disappointment. This separation was so painful for her that sixty years later she could still vividly recall the final moments, including the comforting words of a sympathetic teacher, Professor Schaeffer, who said to her as they parted: "One day the sun will shine for you again ".

Since there was no opportunity for further education and the Nazis had banned Jewish school attendance, it meant the end of Ruth's general education. The economic situation of the family meant that Ruth held various jobs, including childcare and as an office worker. Although Ruth was still a teenager, she saw the need to confront her future in Nazi Germany. Like many young German Jews, she became active in Jewish youth groups. She became active there under the influence of her older cousin, Arno, who played a leading role in the local Zionist youth organization. Many of the organization's activities were social or athletic. She competed in the group's Bar-Kokhba gymnastics and track and field events. At that time, it was impossible for Jewish youth to mingle with non-Jews, so the youth group provided a setting for Jewish youth to meet. However, the most important task of the youth organization was to give hope and orientation to the Jewish youth in Germany. Above all, the thought of leaving Germany spread through the minds of the young people. When Ruth became aware of her own vulnerability, she came to this conviction and joined the Zionist youth organization. She began to prepare for the possibility of emigration. In early 1937, considering her age and the opportunities available to her, she decided to take part in a nursing course organized by the Jewish community. She was convinced that her chances of emigrating would improve with a nursing education. It was also around this time that she began studying the English language at home through books and Linguaphone voice recordings, believing that England or the United States would be the eventual havens. (She had not learned English at school. French was taught at the Lyceum.)

Ruth proceeded with this plan despite her parents' initial disapproval. Although dissatisfied with life under the Nazi regime, in 1936 and 1937 they did not see the need to emigrate. Her parents, like many other Berlin Jews of the older generation, prepared to emigrate later than people in other parts of Germany, as Berliners were the most cosmopolitan and least Nazi population in the country. Also, living in the big city allowed for a degree of anonymity, leading to a sense of security not found in smaller towns. So, the unrealistic feeling that Nazism would pass, or that its effects would be weakened and that it would take longer in Berlin than elsewhere, worked to their disadvantage.

Ruth's parents viewed her earnest preparation for emigration as the impulsiveness of youth; they took her for a stubborn girl who refused to see things as her parents did. So, she was forced to take matters into her own hands, and she did. Ruth's training as a nurse took place in the Jewish hospital on Iranische Strasse (today Heinz-Galinski-Strasse 1), which was close to the family’s apartment. Her training combined practical nursing work with classroom instruction.

One of her vivid recollections of this time referred to some Jewish patients recovering from their imprisonment in Sachsenhausen, the concentration camp northwest of Berlin.
Other of Ruth’s memories include attending the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Out of deference to world public opinion, the Nazis had toned down their anti-Jewish propaganda at the time. The fact that she did not look Jewish allowed her to come and go without fear. Ironically, one of the events she witnessed was the victory of Jesse Owens in the long jump (one of many events that served to refute Nazi theories and propaganda about German racial superiority).

During the summer of 1938, with high geopolitical tension due to Hitler’s demands for the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, Ruth felt the time had come to act. She wrote to the UK Home Office to obtain an immigration visa and work permit as a trainee nurse, citing the training she had already started. She completed this task all by herself, without the professional help of a lawyer or consultant. At first her parents tried to dissuade her, but since she insisted, they raised no further objection. However, over the summer, as the international and domestic political situation continued to deteriorate, her parents changed their minds.

Meanwhile, Ruth's letter to the British Home Office did not go unanswered. Although Britain refused to allow increased immigration into Mandatory Palestine (it had yielded to Arab pressure in its 1939 White Paper and halted immigration there), the UK significantly increased the number of German Jews admitted to the British Isles. From Kristallnacht to the outbreak of the war, 40,000 German refugees were taken in. Ruth's application was granted and she was given a 12 month visa and work permit to continue training as a nurse in a hospital in the UK.
For a young woman her age (she was 18 at the time) the only way to enter the UK independently was as a domestic worker or as a nurse.

Ruth received her visa in the spring of 1939. With the visa that gave her freedom, Ruth made her final preparations to leave Germany. She was to take the train west across Germany, cross the border into Holland and then continue by train and ferry to London, where she was to be placed with her maternal grandmother's cousin for a short time.

By the spring of 1939, those lucky enough to obtain a legal visa were allowed to emigrate with little more than their shirts on their backs. At this point, all the emigrants were allowed was a limited personal luggage allowance for clothes and 10 marks in cash.

Ruth arrived in London on May 11th. From there she went to Birkenhead General Hospital (near Liverpool) where, as required, she registered as a foreigner and began her training as a probationary nurse.

The invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939 and the British declaration of war on September 3 made her an enemy alien and thereby also eliminated the possibility of her parents joining her in England. Later, when the blitz of London by the Luftwaffe began, Ruth determined to leave England, fearing a British defeat in the war. However, in the summer of 1940, her only immediate opportunity was the Dominican Republic. So, it was there that we went at the end of summer, 1940. She remained in the Dominican Republic only long enough to get a visa for the USA and she sailed for NY in May, 1941.

So, it was about two years after leaving Germany that Ruth arrived in America. With almost no money, she moved in with her uncle, whose financial situation was not much better than her own. She soon found work as a nanny with a family on West End Avenue in Manhattan.

Ruth met Benny Kleinfeld in a bank when he asked her, in German, if he could help her to open an account. The young man was a Jewish immigrant from Vienna and then asked her out on a date. The two began seeing one another and were married on January 4, 1942.

Ruth had been writing to her parents in Berlin since arriving in the US but had received no reply. The occasion of her marriage warranted another attempt to contact her parents, so she wrote again, this time on behalf of the Red Cross (since Germany and the US were at war by that time). This time, she did receive an answer, but not from Berlin; the letter from her parents, which was also sent to her by the Red Cross, came from the Theresienstadt concentration camp. They acknowledged receipt of her letter with news of her marriage, expressing their joy at her safety and happiness and the fact that she was no longer alone. For Herman and Selma this was to be their last consolation on earth. Although Ruth kept writing, she never heard from them again.