Ruth: training as a nurse, making friends for life
Image: A magenta border, with a fully lit Hanukía in cyans, in white: "Eight Refugee Stories for Chanukah" and the Birmingham Progressive Synagogue logo, "celebrating Birmingham as a City of Sanctuary". Centrally on white, in cyan: Ruth: "Together we built a family home, focussing on being active in our Jewish lives and ensuring we worked with people of different faiths, making the world a better place."
Ruth was 15 years old when her parents sent her to England in 1936, to escape from Nazi Germany. A Christian family took her in and later sponsored her parents to escape to the UK too in 1939.
Ruth, now 103, tells her story: ‘My father was interned as an ‘enemy alien’ for a full year. He was released in 1940 and allowed to work. He found a job in a large department store in Oxford selling black-out material. When a new nun joined the local convent, they would ask Mr Cohen for black-out material for their uniforms. In return the nuns would occasionally bring butter from their trips back home to Ireland!
My father encouraged me to get proper training and qualifications for work. Women refugees could only work as domestic servants or train as a nurse. I was accepted at Birmingham Hospital and found the four-year nursing training an incredibly happy time, making friends for life.’
All her working life, Ruth was a nurse. ‘I enjoyed my different nursing roles, especially in the 1970’s when I worked as the employees’ nurse at the Town Hall. We were a medical team from different faiths and cultures, but the respect we had for one another was so strong.
In the last year of my training, I met my husband Heinz and married in 1948. Together we built a family home focusing on being active in our Jewish lives and ensuring we worked with people of different faiths in making the world a better place.’