Harriet Ritter/Barry Burd Genealogy
 

Ruth's Stories
 

Ruth and her mother left Russia when Ruth was nine years old, for a visit with relatives in Boston, around the time of the Russian Revolution. (While watching the movie "Reds", Ruth found the scenes of the crowded train stations very familiar, and said she remembered waiting for a long time, in a huge crowd, to get on the train.)

Ruth described her family as very well-to-do before the Revolution, which dictated that Jewish people would have their property taken away.  She and her parents lived in the same big house with the grandparents, the grandmother being the matriarch of the clan.  Ruth described a rather pampered life with servants who cared for the family.  They were a very religious family; one of Ruth's jobs on the Sabbath was to carry her grandmother's bible to temple, since the grandmother carrying it herself would have constituted forbidden work on the Sabbath.

Ruth told of her father, Benjamin, taking her to the opera in Odessa.  He was wearing his soldier's uniform, which was very impressive to her, especially his hat.  Benjamin let Ruth wear and hold his hat during the performance, but she accidentally left it behind.  They were unable to find it, and she was certain that she would be punished, but to her surprise and delight, she wasn't.  That occasion may have been the last time she saw her father.  They exchanged several letters before he was killed in W.W.II.

Ruth and her mother sailed to America by way of England.  Ruth's strongest recollection of the trip was that as a child, she was one of the only passengers who was not seasick, and she spent most of the time tending to adults who were ill.

When Ruth started school in the U.S., she was put in a younger class because she spoke only Russian.  She remembered the other kids laughing at her in the beginning when she didn't understand the language.