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Survivors & Witnesses |
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| Choosing to Remember from the Shoah to the Mountains | |||
 Ruth as Young Girl Name: Ruth Marx Chicurel Lifespan: Birthplace: Munich, Germany Parents: Salo and Ella Gilde Marx Siblings: Bernd Children: Four Grandchildren: Four
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Throughout Ruth Marx's early childhood she led a comfortable and
''very, very, very'' sheltered life. Her family belonged to a
Conservative Synagogue in Munich and they observed a traditional Jewish
life. The only real sadness they knew was the early death by natural
causes of her younger brother Bernd.
With the election of Hitler, Ruth says, "My father saw the whole thing coming.'' In 1933, he moved the family to Zagreb, Yugoslavia, where the government was promising work permits for refugees who had lived there for a year. But after one year of residency, Salo was still unable to obtain a work permit. |
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Ruth attended school in Zagreb. Salo then went to Italy but could not find work there either. In 1934, Salo purchased a factory in Germany and the family returned to Munich and began afresh to look for a way out of Germany. |
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The only real option was immigration out of the country, but for that, one needed an affidavit from someone who would agree to sponsor you. The Marx family knew no one outside of Germany who would provide them with an affidavit. Meanwhile, her father applied for a visa hoping that something would turn up. In the late 1930s: he received a very low quota number and he knew he had a long wait. One day in 1936, Salo's mother, Emma called her son to say that she had found a box of old correspondences in her attic which she would discard unless he wanted it. Salo Marx said he would look at it during his next visit. On examination of the letters he found one posted from Louisville, Kentucky written to Joseph Marx, Emma's husband, before his death. The letter was thanking Joseph for his financial assistance in helping this young man leave Germany for America many years earlier. No one in Ruth's family recognized the name and there was no address. Salo wrote to the mayor of Louisville and asked if this name was familiar. The mayor sent Salo a long list of names and of all their addresses. Salo wrote each one and asked if they were related to the person who had written the letter of thanks. He asked that they now return the favor and help his family leave Germany by signing an affidavit. Months later one of them replied that they were related to the person mentioned and that they would think about providing an affidavit for them. It was no easy matter since they had to complete a detailed financial statement proving their personal solvency in case the need arose for financial assistance for the new immigrants.
During all of this Ruth was mostly unaware of the growing danger. Her parents worked very hard to protect her from what was happening all around her. Kristallnacht (November 9 and 10) was her first real awareness of the danger. On that night her father was picked up by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp until he was released on February 3, 1939. After Kristallnacht, Jews were no longer allowed to attend public schools in Munich so Ruth enrolled in a Jewish school. Meanwhile, the family was living in fear that Salo would be picked up again. Finally, the Louisville sponsor signed a financial statement in late 1939. In November, Ruth and her parents took a train to Italy and from there, a passage to New York. Ruth was 14 years old. The two-week boat ride still held danger. Once, during the middle of the night the boat was stopped by a French submarine. Several passengers were taken off the boat and then they were allowed to proceed to New York. Once in New York, Ruth's mother Ella worked to sustain the family. (Her father by this point had become ill.) She knew her sister, Mascha, had made it safely to Denmark, and later to Sweden where she spent the rest of the war before coming to the United States. She tried to bring over other family members including her mother Henrietta Gilde, her father Oskar Gilde, and her brother Siegfried Gilde. Chicurel said, ''I think people really want to help, but when it comes to the bottom line - then it's hard.'' After the war, Ruth's mother learned that her parents had not survived and that her brother had died in the Warsaw Ghetto. His wife and child perished in Theresienstadt. Ruth also learned that her best friend Leni Tenzer had made it safely to England on the Kindertransport. |
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Ruth Chicurel and family today. Ruth is
second from the left. |
Ruth married Ike Chicurel and in 1964, moved to Asheville, NC with their children and with Ruth's mother Ella. Ike worked as a chemist at Olin. During the years of raising small children, the war was never discussed. Despite her mother Ella's objections, Ruth's response was, "There's a long enough life to tell them; why tell them now? Let children be children for as long as they can.'' Once they became teenagers they learned the history of their family. In 1978, Ruth was the Secretary and later the Administrative Assistant to the Director of Continuing Medical Education at Mountain Area Health Education Center. She and Ike are active volunteers in the Asheville community. | ||
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