Ruth Weiss fled as a child from the Nazis, and took place in Apartheid South Africa a new home. With the 6. Their Saga of Jewish family Löw, the 94-Year-old is now on a reading tour. The DW they met for the interview.
Mrs White, just the new Band of their large family appeared Saga: the löw in Germany, told a about 350 years, Jewish family history. This book leads up to the year 2015: Neo-Nazis, the death of one Asylum seeker – what did you want to tell the story of Pippa’s, the great-granddaughter of the German Jew Adolph Loew?
That there is between the Generation today and what has happened in the past, a large fraction. Since the beginning of the national socialism are passed a hundred years, but it’s still a long time. The descendants are like the main character in my novel. She moves into an inherited house without any thoughts of the one to whom the house has heard. Only by a fire, she receives the impulse, but to research it. So, you will be confronted for the first Time in the history of your family.
It is also a question of reconciliation?
Yes, it’s about reconciliation. The understanding comes through the private stories and not by politics.
You will lead your story?
It depends on the publisher. I had not designed my novel cycle at the beginning actually, as a family Saga. After I retired, I have been in Fürth, where I was born, and I started to read Jewish history of the past, from the age of 17. Century. Since I’ve discovered that in this area, the homeless Jews at the time had a huge Problem: they were not allowed to stay longer than 72 hours in one place. So they went from one Jewish community to another. However, due to the diversity of the possessions of the Ruling, and because you had to pay at every border crossing a little, it was a huge burden for these poor people. I started to write my story, and the publisher wanted, then after the first volume of a sequel.
The Löw – Epilogue. Volume 6 of the Jewish family Saga
You have to complete on this trip of a tight program: in The morning, a reading in the school, in the afternoon, an in-depth Interview, in the evening reading and conversation. Why is it still so important to tell your personal story and stories in the form of a novel?
I’m not a Survivor of a camp. I’m a Survivor, to emigrate the the enormous was lucky, and also lucky that I was able to write. This means that I have learned the ability to, what was then to communicate what is really a very long time ago. I believe that this is mainly for young people is important. As long as I can, I would like to do more.
What is the response of the young people in General?
Amazing interested. In the days when I was on a reading tour, and we had no disturbances. No one stood up, removed, or in addition, in a daze, on the contrary. There was this Time unusually many questions. I think it has to do with the present political Situation, today, there are also refugees, much more than my time.
You grew up in a village in the vicinity of Nuremberg. With the seizure of power by the Nazis, her family and life was made unbearable. They moved to Fürth and finally went to the Jewish secondary school. How do you remember your school time?
The years in the village with the village school were very nice. We children were fully integrated. My parents belonged to the village. There was a settlement, where we stayed. We were the only Jews. Next to us lived the teacher. What we did not know was that he was a member of the NSDAP. In 1933, the Nazi influence was so great that even in the village, the transition happened very quickly.
Nuremberg – the city where the Nazis held their party rallies
At the age of twelve, in 1936, emigrated with her family to South Africa. Why just South Africa?
My father had lost in April 1933 his work. He had family members already in the beginning of the 20th century. Century after South Africa had emigrated. Relatives there were willing to vouch for him. South Africa was still open for immigrants, White. At least until we realized that we had the right skin color, but the wrong Religion.
They worked first in a lawyer’s office, then in the bookstore of her first husband, journalist Hans Weiss, in the case of an insurance company and in London at a publishing house. How did you come to journalism?
By the paternalism. White was a Journalist at the Berliner Tageblatt, and I worked in an insurance company. I could not study, there was no money. So, I work immediately after school started. Hans Weiss was from the fifty years as a correspondent for southern Africa for the German press Agency. When he started, there was still the VWD (United business services), the part responsible for the economy. Because I now had a fairly high Post in the insurance sector, and thus something with the economy, said Hans, do you. So I have posted – under his name – first of all, only the stories on the Economy.
South Africa was at that time quite interesting for German and English media, but not enough to make really large reports. This meant that he had to look in other African countries. This has made my dear Hans, a couple of Times, and then he said: “You, I think you can do better.” Since I’m so early on in Africa, traveled to the colonial period, and that was my luck. As the insurance company I worked for actually, the National party came very close, not more I wanted to stay there. And then thought, I’ll give it a try with the journalism.
How was it for you when you came for the first Time back to Germany?
I am have been because of my parents-in-law, who survives, in 1950, for the first Time, which was unusual for German Jews. This meant that I met in Germany at a time where the destruction of the war were visible everywhere. A devastating time. In my encounters with Germans of that time, I’ve met a lot of ‘resistance fighters’. It was quite clear that the Germans were not able to deal with their recent past. But the fact that we have worked very early for the German media, we were able to follow German politics pretty close. What, like I said, for German Jews in Emigration is usually not the case. Even in the seventies, when I worked in Cologne with the Deutsche Welle, has not visited my sister and me. We met in Switzerland.
Until 2003, the German wave had its headquarters in Cologne, Germany
She worked from 1975 to ’78 as Head of service in the Africa team at Deutsche Welle. Why have you given up and gone to London?
When I was in London, I reflected on why I was actually left. I had a Pension, and would have had up to 60 a very nice, for me the ideal Job. But I felt I was not in Germany at the time. From the very first Moment after I arrived in Cologne, I had encounters that had to do with the past.
An example: It was the time between Christmas and new year, we were looking for a Hotel. We found a small Guesthouse and chatted with the owner. She then told me instantly from the bankruptcy of a Bank and said: “are the Jews”. I then asked my colleagues at the Deutsche Welle in this Bank: it had to do with Jews at all. It was in this atmosphere…
Her son Alexander is born in 1966 in London, for you and the child’s life-threatening pregnancy. They were at the time, almost 42, and have taken it on their own. Her second husband Karl as a father is not available. You are proud of your performance as an emancipated, working woman, as a single mother?
I would not put it that way. But I would like to say something else. I have had to do through my work in the insurance company very early on in a man’s world, and this has led to the fact that I’ve been working on about the economy, to continue. I was very often the only woman, and when I decided that I wanted out of this relationship like a child, I was arrogant enough to think I’ll earn enough to create the.
“Trails in the hard Grass” – The South African Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer wrote the Foreword (afterword within the 2. extended edition) the autobiography of Ruth Weiss
After decades in several African countries – South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Zambia and in London, she returned to Germany in 2002 to. Where do you live now?
I now live with my son in Denmark. I am no longer the Youngest, and I thought I would have to somehow be with other people. At some point it goes to the end, and because I wanted to be happy with my son and his family together – and this is now the case.
You are a practicing Jew, German-Jew. For several years, the anti-Semitism in Germany raises its ugly head again. Neo-Nazis roar often go unpunished racist slogans. What do you think the Jews in Germany are in danger again?
I can’t say, because I live in Germany, but seen from the outside, I understand if people say, we are living with Packed suitcases. This is an expression that I heard in the 1960s and 1970s by many Jews. In the eighties and nineties, it was not a theme. But today it is so. This is very dangerous, not only for the Jews, it is also dangerous for the German people.
With the AfD a right is, in Parts of the extreme right-wing party strong in the German Bundestag, represented. The cause for their concern?
Yes, this is the reason why. In the twenty years that I was on a reading tour, and in the time I lived in Germany when the question was asked: “How do you feel in Germany?” I had a very simple answer: The Germany of today is not the Germany of 1930. But in the meantime, I can’t say any more. Today, I can not find, unfortunately, only that 2019 is from the 1930’s very far away. And that is very depressing.
Ruth White was born on 26. June, 1924 born as Ruth Lowenthal in Fürth. In 1936, she emigrated to South Africa where the family business in Johannesburg in a grocery store. As a journalist, she fought against Apartheid and had to leave South Africa, therefore, in 1966. She lived in what was then southern Rhodesia, later Zimbabwe, Zambia, and London. In 1992, she moved back to the Isle of Wight, to write. Ten years later, she returned permanently to Germany and lived in Lüdinghausen in the münsterland region, before they moved to 2015 to your son to Denmark.
Ruth Weiss: The Löw – Epilogue. A Jewish family Saga in Germany. Band 6, Verlag Edition AV 2019, 316 pages.
Ruth White: way in the tough Grass, memories of Germany, South Africa and England. Verlag Edition AV 2016, 304 pages.
The interview was conducted by Sabine Peschel.