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 Four childhood friends and survivors come together
DEBORAH SUSSMAN SUSSER
Associate Editor of Jewish News of Greater Phoenix Online
Ruth Joffe has seen the worst that life has to offer and the best; her great-granddaughter Kate, in addition to being cute beyond description, embodies the triumph of the latter over the former.
Six-month-old Kate was the youngest guest at her great-grandmother's 85th birthday party, held Jan. 19 at the Scottsdale home of Joffe's daughter, Recky Maltenfort Brannon. Kate obliged the many friends and family members who wanted to hold her, then bounced contentedly in an ExerSaucer while the other guests ate lunch and shared a series of toasts celebrating Ruth's extraordinary life.
Seated at the table of honor with Ruth were three very special friends of hers - special not only because they have known Ruth since they were girls in Germany 70 some years ago, and because they have traveled from around the country to be here today, but because, like Ruth, all three are survivors of the Nazi ghettoes and concentration camps.
"It's a miracle we got that old, believe me," says Gerda Wasserman, who at 88 is the oldest of the four. Trim and stylish in a black-and-white jacket, Wasserman, nee Rose, lives in New York City.
"We're the last of the Mohicans," she says wryly, surveying the festivities.
"This is our last hoorah."
Born in Paderborn, Germany, in 1923, Ruth Joffe, nee Katz, was one of five children born to a cattle dealer and his wife. The family left Paderborn in 1933, by night, after Hitler came to power; they settled in nearby Hanover, which is where, at the age of about 14, Ruth met Gerda, as well as Hannah Rath (nee Lang) and Lona Hess (nee Wolferman).
Ruth recalls that the teenagers met at the Sportsplatz, while Lona remembers meeting the others in the Hebrew school they attended twice a week. All the girls worked, Ruth at a milliner's, learning to make hats, she recalls, while Lona and Hannah worked at a store that made sweaters and Gerda worked in the old-age home. After a year and a half at the milliner, Ruth says, she had to find another job, as Jews were no longer allowed there.
In December, 1941, 18-year-old Ruth, Hannah and Lona found themselves on the same transport to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia. Of about 1,000 people, mostly the same age, Lona says only 30 would survive.
Gerda, who was older, traveled a slightly different path, deported with her parents from Hamburg. But she was not spared the same experience. Her story remains woven together with those of her friends, their similar strands mirroring and crossing each other, composing a fabric of loss, despair and new beginnings.
"Ruth and I really got friendly when we were put in the ghetto," says Hannah. "We became friends because we both lost our families."
"There is such a bond," Gerda adds.
In the six decades since their liberation, the women have shared the personal milestones that mark most lives - marriages, births, anniversaries, deaths - and in 1991, they gathered together to share a different kind of milestone: The four returned to Hanover, at the invitation of the government, to witness the laying of a plaque there to commemorate the deportation of the Jews.
The happier occasion of Ruth's birthday is the first time in many years that the friends have actually been together in the same place. Hannah, 85, flew in from her home in Cleveland, and Lona, also 85, from Miami. Gerda almost didn't make the trip from New York to Phoenix, she confessed in her toast during lunch, but Ruth persuaded her to come by telling her it would be a good birthday present.
Each guest's toast presented another facet of the long and remarkable life Ruth Joffe has led.
Granddaughter Jody told the story of how Ruth, a refugee among other refugees, noticed a woman on the boat to America who had gloves that matched her own purse. Wanting to look put together as she embarked on her new life, she offered the woman a ring - a gift from her brother - in exchange for the gloves, and the woman agreed.
Years later, Ruth and the woman met up again - and the woman returned Ruth's ring to her. Jody wears it today.
Jody's sister, Deborah, read aloud a children's picture book she wrote about her Oma's life, while Deborah's daughter, baby Kate, looked on.
"I love my Oma because," Deborah read, "she's a survivor and my hero."
Ruth's grandson, Lorne, recalled his Opa, a fellow survivor whom Ruth married in 1946, and lovingly recounted how as a child he would accompany his Opa to the health club and bowling, one small boy in a group of old men.
"You've taught me so much - my love of Israel and my Jewish faith," he told his grandmother. "I always promised you that if I have a son I'll name him Werner for your younger brother, who was killed during the war."
Rebecca Bornstein Lipton, the daughter of Ruth's first cousin, described the close relationship between Ruth's family, who settled in Indianapolis, and Rebecca's family in nearby Gary, Ind.
"Every Pesach they would come to us," she said. "We would go to them for the High Holidays.
But, she noted, even as close as they were, there were certain things they didn't discuss.
"We heard the stories of after the liberation. We never heard about the really bad stuff."
Both Ruth's children - daughter Recky and son Gary - saluted their mother, as did Gary's sons Jonah and Evan, the youngest guests next to Kate.
Also in attendance were several members of the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association, to which Ruth belongs, as well as Ruth's good friend Henni Glick, a survivor from Dusseldorf, Germany, whom Ruth met here in Arizona.
Perhaps the most poignant toast came from Ruth's old friend Hannah, who talked about how she and Ruth had been inseparable from Germany on, sleeping close together in a cot in the camp.
"We came through it," she said. "Thank God we were liberated together."
Hannah described how Ruth nursed her through typhoid fever and pulled her on a sled to escape the advancing Russians, who were shooting from all sides.
"We came to America," she said finally, "and we got married.
"We really made a nice life for ourselves."
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