Musically Speaking by Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer

Author:Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer [Westheimer, Ruth K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Women, Social Scientists & Psychologists
ISBN: 9780812208351
Google: WNgEEWaePF0C
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2013-03-25T04:24:37+00:00

Here in these songs was my fantasy of Palestine as a land of milk and honey, where the water was sweet and plentiful and the land was fertile. What I found when I arrived was completely different, but that is getting ahead of myself. In Switzerland, I sang the Hebrew melodies with my loudest voice and copied the lyrics that were most meaningful to me into my diary.

A majority of the fifty refugee children at Heiden went to Palestine, with the rest going to other countries where they had relatives. Our group left Wartheim on July 7, 1945, a month before the war in the Pacific was over. We first took a train to the Swiss town of Bex, where we spent two months preparing for our great move. We then traveled to Marseilles, from where we were to set sail. This was a long train ride, and to pass the time there was music. I remember, in particular, singing “Ki Mitziyon,” and I remember, too, that just like six and a half years before, it was I who led the group in song. But now we were not crying.

At Marseilles, tents had been set up for us on the beach. We stayed there for two nights, then took a train to Toulon, where we boarded a ship bound for Palestine. It was very crowded-there were six hundred of us on board-and I slept on the deck with many of the others. It was early September, and the weather was mild, and the stars overhead were brighter than any I had ever seen. Our journey lasted six days, and it seems to me that we must have sung and danced to the Zionist songs without stop. But our excitement was dashed when we arrived in Haifa. We had to wait in a camp, called Atlit, while the British sorted out our papers. After having seen pictures of Jews being held in German concentration camps, it quite naturally upset us to be incarcerated in Eretz Yisrael, in the Land of Israel.

Fortunately, after a few days, I was allowed to leave. Along with about thirty-five other new immigrants, I set out in a convoy of covered trucks for the kibbutz, or collective farm, that was to be our new home. It was called Ayanot, near the small town of Nahalal, not far from Haifa, and upon arrival I experienced another shock. The people who ran the kibbutz were Polish Jews in the main and they had an understandable distaste for all things German. Some of that cruelly extended to us. They immediately demanded that we discard our Teutonic-sounding first names and adopt new ones more in keeping with the new land. And so I was no longer to be Karola but Ruth. I did keep “Karola” as a middle name, though, hoping against hope that my parents were still alive, and thinking that if they saw a reference to “Ruth K. Siegel,” they would somehow know it was me. Even today, for professional and official purposes, I give my name as Ruth K.

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