full contrary woman

Ruth Blatt, a German Jewish émigré, lived an extraordinary life in the 20th century. She made her own decisions on religion, sex, and politics, including joining the resistance against Hitler. Ruth was caught with anti-Nazi pamphlets and sentenced to hard labor. She managed to flee to Shanghai during WWII before coming to Australia. Ruth's friend, Anna Funder, recorded her stories of courage and humility. Ruth considered herself a contrary woman. She shared memories of her childhood, education, and marriage. Ruth's life was shaped by the historical events of her time. Hi, Sharon Davis with you on Hindsight and today we're witness to some of the key historical events of the 20th century through the incredible visceral life story of one woman, the late German Jewish émigré Ruth Blatt. Born in 1906, Ruth Blatt was a woman of the 20th century. She made her own choices on all its big issues, religion, sex and politics, abandoning Judaism at 16, marrying and divorcing when she chose, and joining the resistance against Hitler. In 1934, Ruth was caught with anti-Nazi pamphlets secreted in her underwear. She was sentenced to five years hard labour. By the time she was released, World War II had broken out and she managed, miraculously, to flee Germany on the last boat to leave Europe for Shanghai. She spent seven years there before coming to Australia in 1947. Ruth Blatt died in 2001, just several months before today's feature was first broadcast. In this portrait of an extraordinary life, Ruth Blatt never speaks of her own courage, of the struggle for survival, circumstances largely unimaginable to us today. Instead, Ruth simply states, I have always been contrary. Writer Anna Funder, a friend of Ruth Blatt's, presents today's feature. Contrary, yeah, that's what I was. Who am I? I'm a nobody. My friend Ruth Blatt was born into a wealthy German Jewish family in 1906. She always saw herself as a woman of the new century, making all her own decisions, the big ones, about politics. I chose to fight the Nazis. About sex. I was 19 when I had an affair with Hans. And about religion. The older I get, the more I go away from Judaism. As a left-wing Jewish woman in the Germany of the first half of the 20th century, those decisions could have cost her her life. Over years, Ruth told me about what she had done. She had no children, and as she approached 90, her past seemed to be fragmenting. I was frightened her modesty would combine with her failing memory to leave little trace of her in the world. In winter 1995, we sat down in her house in Caulfield, Melbourne, and made these recordings. Ruth told me stories of breathtaking courage, courage bordering on recklessness. She spoke of momentous decisions with a humility and matter-of-factness that, in retrospect, are more and more astonishing. She would never have called herself brave. Ruth called herself a contrary woman. There's nothing interesting where I was born. I was born in our house, not in a hospital. My mother got married on the 25th of March, 1906, and I was born on the 26th of December, 1906. And she said that the day before, her good friend got married, but she had to go upstairs, and I already came out half into the toilet. Ha, ha, ha! Four big fish, das war ich immer. Of course. Ja, ja, four big fish. Wanted to see what's around. Ha, ha, ha! Tell me about your mother. Well, my mother, poor girl, was a very attractive girl. She was naughty at school. She never used staircases, she told me, but she always went around the banisters. Ha, ha, ha! I remember that we had a beautiful house. What town? In Königswütte. Cholewska Uta in Polish. So the border went very close to Cholewska Uta. The border, yeah, four kilometers was the border. Tell me about your father. He was born in 1875. In 1890 he did his matric. My father fought in the war in 1916. He didn't have to fight because he was over 40. He was a volunteer to save the Kaiser and etc. And he drew a pension, but he lost his right arm. Ha, ha, ha! My father used to go three times a year to the synagogue. Two days on New Year and the Day of Atonement. And he said, come meet in the synagogue. And I was about 15 or 16. And I said, Kitzune libe tut Gott weh. Forced love, that's God. And I didn't. My father wanted us to have a good education, but not as far as I went. I mean, he wanted me to do matric. Then go to a household school where you learn cooking and, you know, what in those days people did with girls. Find a husband, get married when you are 21, 22. You see, my father was 19th century and I was 20th century. I mean, my father said he didn't want me to study. And he said, what do you do on Sundays? He said, on Sundays, before the exam we have to work and otherwise she might go to the pictures. It starts in the pictures and it ends in bed. That's what my father said. Ruth studied literature, philosophy and history in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. She completed her PhD on the poet Hölderlin in 1931. She said her privileged background convinced her of the need to take on the cause of the socially oppressed. When she joined a social democratic student group in Munich, it so exasperated her father that he removed her from both the group and the university. But re-enrolled at Frankfurt, Ruth went straight on to join the Red Student Group and from that, the Socialist Workers' Party. It was there too that she met her first boyfriend. I was 19 when I had an affair with Hans. He wanted to marry me, but very anti-Semitic parents. What did you do with Hans? Well, we slept together a few times, both not knowing how to behave, I suppose. I studied in Munich and we went to the Starnberg lake. And there was no train there. There was only a boat that came at 11 o'clock every morning. Now, Starnberg is about an hour and a half from Munich. And Munich is about 16 hours by train from where my parents lived, or 20 hours by train. But I was so scared when the boat came at 11 o'clock. That's my father. I brought a ring at Woolworth's and always was hiding when the boat arrived. You thought he would come and find you? Yes. By the time she finished her studies, Hitler was on the rise. His fears were anathema to Ruth, that she thought she should hear him for herself in Berlin. I heard that Hitler would give a talk for women in the biggest hall at the zoo, I think. Yes, at the zoo. And I thought, well, I'll go and have a look. What year was that? Well, it must have been 1930. It was either after he had become the Führer, that was in January 1933. It could have been then, or it could have been a little bit before. The women fell for Hitler, absolutely fell for him. It was chock-a-block full, mostly with women. And, of course, first came all the people with the flags and so on and so forth. And Nazi flags? Nazi flags, yes. And when Hitler came, some women threw themselves on the floor and they said, Führer, step on me. You know, they threw a lot of flowers on him and then they just, in front of him, they fell down and they wanted to be thrown off. Ruth laughs at the idea of women subjecting themselves to a Führer, but at the same time her father had his own plans for subjecting her to a suitable husband. My father wrote me a letter and he said, come to Berlin from Frankfurt and bring nice clothes. Well, my father never knew whether you wore something in green or in black. So, my brother told me he had some plans with a man. With a future husband of yours. And to write, we arrived. When my father went to Berlin, he always stayed with Uncle Willy. This time we went to the Hotel Eden, which was very posh. Had two rooms, one for me and one for my parents. And I thought, well, that's funny, isn't it? And the next day we had five o'clock tea in that posh hotel where we stayed. And my father came with a man who was ten years older, and I had never been interested in older men. He was a lawyer. He came from the job. He had an Aktentasche, a briefcase, and he danced with the briefcase in his hand, because there were important papers there. And we had nothing to tell, but he had an interesting conversation about the First World War with my father. Well, I thought, this is funny. And of course I had no interest whatsoever, very much to the disgust of Uncle Willy and my father. Uncle Willy wrote a letter to my father, very disappointed, and so on, he wants to do the best for your daughter, and why is she so stubborn, and what does she think she is? Even with a PhD, if she gets it, she will not get such a good husband. You think this man was interested in me? I mean, he would have married me because he would have got 30 or 40,000 marks, or even more, I don't know how much. Ten years older. I've never been interested in such old men. There is a Jewish word, a Hebrew word, I mean, we didn't use any Hebrew words, but sometimes you use words like m'shuge, for instance, crazy. m'shuge. You are m'shuge, you are crazy. And this word was, this is another phoneme. Phoneme is face. It means, apparently, a face. You know, you are always contradictory, always contrary. That's what I was. I mean, I can understand today, when I am an old woman, I can quite understand how my father must have suffered. Ha ha ha! Ruth married a fellow student of her own choosing in 1932. They settled in Frankfurt, where she began her teacher training. We are now moving over towards the room where the new Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler is. He is standing in bright light at the window, looking out at the stormtroopers marching past, and the massive throng of people cheering him. This is a great, great historical moment. The meaning of which is probably not even clear to us today. This is a great, great historical moment. The meaning of which is probably not even clear to us today. This is a great, great historical moment. The meaning of which is probably not even clear to us today. Ruth hung a communist flag from her Frankfurt balcony, a red rag to the new Nazi regime. I was warned not to take any notice of May Day, of course, because Hitler came to power in January 1933. But I thought, something has to be done, and so I put, not a very big one, but I put a flag out. And two days after the 1st of May we got this letter, the SR will come and smash your furniture. So the very night, we didn't wait for the next day. We went to England. We went by train, and we had the passport. He showed the passport, and we were really shivering. You know, that they would ask us questions, but didn't ask, and we arrived the next day in England. The flat was destroyed, never went back. Well, first I told him we were looking for a room in Hammersmith, an Irish family, and we asked them, we said, our English isn't very good, we are refugees, but we want to stay here. And they said, no, you are not British, that's all right. And after six weeks we left, because we were really not clean. And we went to 175 Cromwell Road, and had a room there with an elderly lady, and she said exactly the same, she said, as long as you are not Irish, it's okay with me. My husband got a job as a tutor at Southampton University. And he only came home on Saturdays. On Saturday evening I used to go to political meetings. And the trouble was that, of course, my husband, I mean, he voted Labour, and that was all. He wasn't interested, really interested in politics. And he wanted to go to a concert or something, but I went to the meetings. Bevin was the leader of the socialist group. And I got letters, and that made it so difficult later on for me. I got letters from Germany about the rearmament of Germany. Whether it was Ruth's political commitment, or her husband's absences, or both, the couple grew apart. Ruth left for Paris. My group in Germany, which was the left socialist group, not social democratic, but more left, but not communist, of course they fled to Paris because they were in danger there. And so I joined them. And at the same time I went to the Alliance Francaise and did this course. Ruth volunteered for a very, perhaps insanely dangerous mission to smuggle anti-Hitler leaflets across the border for distribution within Germany. So how did you get these leaflets? What were the leaflets? Well, the leaflets were just anti-Hitler leaflets. Get rid of Hitler, or something like that. I have forgotten what it was. Who produced them? Well, the party gave them to me. I went to my parents by train. From Paris to Königssee? Yeah, to my parents. And then it's only four kilometers to Germany. And there they had already the notification that someone will come and will have leaflets. So I had to undress and they found the leaflets. After Ruth's arrest, her brother Oskar wrote to the Socialist Workers' Party telling them how it happened. I got the news a week ago. Ruth was at home until Easter Sunday. On that day, she and my parents took the car to the border. When she showed her passport, she was asked to get out and immediately given over to two officials who had come especially from Berlin to wait for her. My father managed to obtain some information from the two men. They knew of her relationship with the friends in Paris and three names were named. I think this shows that we are dealing here with a denunciation and one from very close and trusted quarters. I know what Ruth's mission was, but I do not believe that she was careless nor that she talked about it. I beg you above all to operate with the greatest of care and suspicion. It is to be feared that if the betrayer sits in your inner circle, as I believe, any publicity or attempts at assistance on your part will end up as incriminating material. Later, Ruth found out who had betrayed her. One of the other socialists in Paris had become a Nazi mole. There was this young man. I paid for one session that he could do the beginner's range. He didn't have much up there. But he was a member of our party. Well, then he decided, he looked very airy and he was tall and fair, and to go back to Germany. And so he wrote a letter. I knew that afterwards he wrote a letter that someone is coming with leaflets to Berlin. And I was the person. Who did he write to? Well, he must have written to some organization. National socialist organization. They also arrested her estranged husband and brought him in to await their joint trial. They were each kept in remand cells for 11 months. I was always taken to the headquarters after 4 o'clock. Most of the people who worked there went home. They put me against the wall and then they shot on top of me, you know. They had a revolver and they said, now you tell us the truth. If you don't tell us the truth, we shoot properly into you. How long was the trial? How long did it go on for? A day and a half. And they were all in uniform. There was not one civil judge. In black uniform, you know, the Nazi black uniform. In its judgment, the court dealt harshly with Ruth and what it called her Jewish-Marxist international activity. The accused, Ruth Heinrichsdorf, grew up in the city of Königsitte, formerly in German Upper Silesia, now Poland. She is the daughter of a well-to-do timber wholesaler who volunteered, despite his advanced age, to fight for Germany in the Great War. She is of Jewish descent. I had a very good lawyer, whom my father had got for me and who was in the Nazi party and that helped. So he was a lawyer in the Nazi party representing a young Jewish woman on trial for preparation. But it helped a lot that my father was a cripple from the First World War and that they had great respect for him. Sit down, offered him a seat immediately. Yeah, that helped. And the Nazi lawyer helped, too. Ruth's friend from London, the Quaker, Kenneth Dean, came to her trial to try to save her. He came to Berlin and said he would marry me. He said we are engaged and that we went and that he would marry me and they said, no, I would have become a British subject, of course. He was gay, but I mean, they didn't know that. Here, Mr. Richter. I promised to send you a report on the Heinrichsdorf trial. Many of the accusations against Ruth have undoubtedly been made by her husband. He must have thought that the more he blackened Ruth's name, the more innocent he himself would appear. According to Paul Heinrichsdorf, it was his wife who was responsible for maintaining from London the links with the parish branch of the party. His behaviour has made it impossible for her to deny many things, things that he'd revealed for his own benefit. Unfortunately, due to the unnecessary confession of poor H, our efforts were of little use. Ruth conducted herself throughout with extraordinary courage. When it was suggested that she should plead for mercy, she answered the court, I will not beg for mercy from this current regime. I think there's nothing more that I can add. Best wishes, Kenneth James. We hereby find the accused Ruth Heinrichsdorf guilty of preparation of high treason and sentence her to penal servitude with hard labour for five years. The accused Paul Heinrichsdorf, however, only to the extent of aiding and abetting. They asked for twelve years and I got five. I said, the happiest day of my life. In the German penal system, penitentiary was worse than prison. Ruth was kept in solitary. Her hard labour consisted of working from dawn till dusk, making ten dozen fake flowers a day for the Berlin bourgeoisie. And tell me about the penitentiary. In the penitentiary, at first, I was in a big hall. There were a lot of elderly women and their crime was, they were not all political, their crime was abortion. I was with them for about half a year, I think, and then the supervisor said, oh, she's an intellectual and political and she will influence the other people. This is why I got into solitary. We got meat three times a year. Meat we got Christmas, Easter and Wednesday. I had, three years I had no, no menstruation. I couldn't resist food. And I lost the hair. It fell out. It fell out, yes, of course. Did it come back afterwards? It came back afterwards. Oh Mädchen, Mädchen, wie lieb ich dich. Lens dein Auge, wie liebst du mich. So liebt sie, lässt sie Gesang und Luft in den Augen blumen. Would strike me that there would be conditions for someone to go in time. Well, I wouldn't know about it. Liedern und Tänzen sind gut, weil ewig tausend Lieder mit lieb. Her brother said it was her unconquerable vitality that got her through the very hard times in her life. She told me that poetry sustained her. She would recite her favorite works in her cell. Later she recited them in her nursing home room, perhaps also to stay sane. Lens dein Auge, wie liebst du mich. So liebt sie, lässt sie Gesang und Luft in den Augen blumen. Would strike me that there would be conditions for someone to go in time. I was in prison from 35 to 40. And in June 40, I had to leave Germany within 24 hours. Well, they said, I leave Germany or I go into concentration camp. Well, that was the condition, because the war was on already in Europe. We didn't know that there was war. We didn't get any newspaper, nothing. In prison you didn't find anything? No, nothing, not the political ones. I was 24 hours with my mother after I was freed. My mother had given away all my clothes. When she knew when I come out, she would give me new things, which she couldn't do because she had no coupons. Only very few. So there were these curtains. And out of these curtains, blue and white, my mother had two dresses made. They were identical. And with these two dresses, it was all I had. I went to Shanghai. Shanghai was the only place in the world that accepted refugees without any papers or passports. The question for Ruth was whether she could get a boat from Genoa before fascist Italy closed its borders and sent her back to the Nazis. You see, the war was on. You couldn't go to England or to any place in Europe. But Shanghai, if you showed 200 US dollars, you didn't even need a passport. You could go to Shanghai. My brother had sent the money. I got a train to Vienna because they said there is a boat going from Italy to Shanghai. There is a boat going from Italy to Shanghai. We came to the border between Austria and Italy. And we're told, no, we have to go back to Germany because there is no more boat. Italy is joining the war. So a man in that group, they were mostly Austrian Jews, went to find out whether the boat would still be going. And he came back and he said that the last boat is going, the Conte Verde. I mean, if I were religious, I would say that is a miracle. Because as soon as we arrived in Shanghai, Italy, we feared the war. The Nazis took our villa for their office. It was in a garden, very nice. So my mother fled to Eastwood, to Krakow, I think. But the Nazis followed. I mean, I don't know, I wanted to get her to Shanghai, but they wouldn't give her a passport. What happened? Shanghai. But they wouldn't give her a passport. What happened to your mother? Could you write her letters from Shanghai to Poland? Then it stopped. I don't know what happened to her. The mail didn't get through? The mail might have got through, but I mean, whether they killed her, what they did, whether she committed suicide, I have no idea. Very dead. In this room, there is a picture of Ruth's mother, father and brother, arms linked and beaming at the camera. It's 1929. There are no pictures of Ruth, but I know she has some in an album. Dark-haired and strong-featured, there's Ruth making a radio broadcast as a student. Ruth, sallow but smiling on her release from prison. And Ruth in a heavy coat with a turban covering her head in Shanghai. I superimpose these images onto the old woman in front of me, as if to see her through time. Ruth. When I arrived in Shanghai, I didn't know where to go. And a woman came up to me, and she said, do you speak German? I said, yes, I speak German. And she said, I'm a refugee, and I have a room, and I'm looking to share it with someone. And would you care? So I said, yes, all right. And so she took me somewhere in Shanghai, in the international settlement. And there was a room, and the landlady was a Russian woman. And I don't know how long I shared with her, maybe four weeks, because there were bugs, bedbugs, in the room. I had plenty of them in prison. They came always at night. They fell down from the ceiling on the bed. Some 18,000 European Jews fleeing persecution had come to Shanghai. Ruth met Max Blathier, a charismatic, self-educated Bundist, an anti-Zionist Jew. And that's how I met Max. It was a Jewish hospital, and the hospital had a pharmacy. And that's where he worked. And he only got paid for the fare and a meal. The effects of the war in Europe and the Pacific reached Shanghai, but in ameliorated form. The Jews were interned, but not killed. Conditions for many people, however, remained at starvation levels, even for those, like Ruth, who had jobs. She worked first as a governess, then as a nurse. Everything. You could have everything, but it was all expensive. Now, for instance, we were allowed two pounds of sugar a month. Well, we never saw that sugar. It went to the black market immediately. And I know I had malaria in Shanghai, and I had to go to the black market. I had to go to the black market. I had malaria in Shanghai, and Max went to the market to buy me one orange. Just one orange. And we had one ounce of butter a week. That was all we could afford, too. Because I was paid in Shanghai dollars. And that wasn't worth anything. Ruth and Max were married in a Chinese medicine shop. In Shanghai, I was pregnant, and I went to the doctor, and I said, do you think I'm pregnant? Because, I mean, you could also, through undernourishment, lose your period. And he said, yes. And I said to him, do you think I can carry this child? He said, when did you have milk the last time? I said, six months ago. So he said, well, he took it away. That was all. We were very, very poor. Immigration is vital to our future, and has become a very important phase of my government's activity. It is the most wonderful day that ever has been. Because it's a day when something new is beginning. Not only for us. When I arrived here, I weighed six stone, and all my hair had fallen out. And now I have very nice hair, and it isn't grey at all. My hair isn't grey. Look. Ruth lifts her wig, and I see the fine, dark hair pressed flat on her head. But it is so thin, that I can't do a thing with it. This is why I have to wear a wig. Ruth. Eighty-eight and a half years old, and has not one grey hair. Funny. Post-war immigration in Australia was just beginning, and Ruth and Max met the same suspicion and unease with which each generation of immigrants to this country has treated the next. Particularly from a Melbourne radio talk show host. He warned of us, that we could hardly speak English, and that most of us came with a lot of money, because they had black market business in Shanghai, et cetera, et cetera. And I got an invitation whether I would appear at Ruth's session on a Saturday afternoon. So I told him that we haven't got a lot of money. As a matter of fact, we have very little money. But I spoke English. And then the next session, he said, last week you heard Ruth Blatt, and she is one of the exceptions, apparently, who could speak English. But not the kind of English spoken here. We had a bedsitter with one chair in it. The other one had to sit on the bed. OK, two guineas a week. And Mrs. Goldfarb, or whatever her name was, she said, your husband crook. I said, no, I didn't see him, she said. I said, my husband is not a crook. I had never heard the word crook being sick. You see, I didn't know that. So these were the things. I worked in a factory, clothing factory, boys, shorts. Ruth would have liked to teach in the public system, but couldn't until she was naturalized, which took four years. Instead, she accepted a job at the Methodist Ladies College in Melbourne. There she cut an extraordinary figure. Her face was yellow from illness in Shanghai. Her hair was sparse. And she walked with a limp from when Hitler's guards had beaten her on remand. It was only two years after the war, and here she was, a German with a PhD and a passion for literature, who spoke of love in three languages, and ignored the conventions of mid-century, middle-class Australia. Ruth was the only married teacher on staff, and she didn't know what a Methodist was. Gosh, it was an awakening for me. You have no idea. Look, everything was not done. It was a sin now. I don't know. Dr. Wood came every Tuesday for the religious classes of year 11 and 12. And he called me in, and he said, there has been a complaint of a father of the school that you use blasphemous language. And I said, I'm sorry. I didn't know that. Yes, you said to the girls, good God, couldn't you work a little bit harder? And I said, I'm sorry. I speak three languages. I mean, in French you say, has one word that is Dieu. In German you have one word that is God. Why should you have more than one word? Yes, you should say good Lord. And I think I told you that about Goethe and his later wife. And he wrote that beautiful poem, I know it by heart. Wie herrlich leuchtet mir die Natur. Wie glänzt die Sonne, wie lacht die Flur. Es singen Blüten aus jedem Zweig und tausend Stimmen aus dem gestreucht. And in the church where they are 17, I did that with them, and I said, that is our greatest poem. But the worst thing was with this poem. I got a letter from a father who said this man Goethe should not be taught to young girls. Why didn't he have a decent profession? The older I get, the more I go away from Judaism. I mean, I'll never deny because it is something that I didn't choose. So, I mean, I deserve being in prison because I chose to fight the Nazis. I mean, most of the people in Auschwitz were believing Jews, believing Jews. Now, why would God kill them? This is what I would like to know. Why doesn't he kill people like me? Who never believed, never. It just does not make sense. I ask myself as I'm older, a lot alone, where is the proof that there is a God? Why do people have so many restrictions on their lives? Ruth Blatt died on the 11th of September 2001. She would have been 95 years old on Boxing Day. So, what do you think will happen when you die? When I die? Well, the flesh will go and the bones... I don't know what happens to bones when they are 50 years old or something. I have in my will that I don't want any speeches, any rabbis or other things, and to just bury the bones. And that's all. Who am I? I'm a nobody. I would like to come back in 50 years to see whether mankind has become a little bit more humane. That's what I wanted to say. Anna Funder wrote and presented today's feature, A Contrary Woman, which was produced by Anna and myself, Sharon Davis. The sound engineer was Andrei Shabanov. It was first broadcast on Radio Eye in 2001. For details about Anna Funder's recent novel, All That I Am, which incorporates a character based on Ruth Blatt, head to the Hindsight webpage. And next week on Hindsight...