20 WORLD WAR II
DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER is familiar to most as the dis-
armingly frank and funny sex therapist and radio and TV
personality. Fewer know that the college professor was
once a sniper for the Israeli army. But there’s a side to her
identity that Westheimer now, at 91, wants to make more
public: orphan of the Holocaust. The story is told in a docu-
mentary out last May, Ask Dr. Ruth. Raised Orthodox
Jewish, Westheimer fled Frankfurt, Germany, for Switzer-
land in 1939 when she was just 10 years old. She never saw
her parents or grandparents again and later learned that
they had died in the genocide. Why is she just now sharing
this story in full? “When you talk about sex from morning to
night,” she says, “you don’t talk about the horrible things
that happened during World War II.”Your real first name isn’t Ruth. What is it,
and why did you stop using it?
My real name is Karola Ruth Siegel. I had to take my middle
name when I emigrated to then-Palestine in 1945, at the end of
World War II, and they said, “You can’t be called Karola here;
it’s too German.” But I did keep the “K” as my second initial; I
still sign everything Ruth K. Westheimer [“ Westheimer” comes
from her late husband, Manfred] because that anchors me in
my past. I also thought if somebody in my family survived, they
would find me because they knew that the “K” stood for Karola.Tell me about your childhood in Germany.
I grew up an only child. I had roller skates, I had 13 dolls; I had every-
thing that a child could have wanted. My grandmother lived with us
and took care of me. I went to an excellent Orthodox Jewish school
and had many friends.Then Hitler came to power.
After the Night of Broken Glass—I don’t call it Kristallnacht because
“crystal” implies beautiful chandeliers—my father and I walked
home, and I remember somebody telling him, “Julius”—that was his
name—“we have to leave. Horrible things are happening.”
My father said that nothing would happen to us the next day
because it was a Christian holiday, Kristi Himmelfartsdag (Ascension
Day). And in the morning he was picked up by the Nazis. He was
taken away to a labor camp, Buchenwald. He wrote my family a post-
card saying that I had to join a group of Orthodox Jewish children
who were escaping from Frankfurt to Switzerland.
My parents gave me life twice—once when I was born, and once
when I was forced to go to Switzerland. For many years, I thought if
I had stayed in Frankfurt, maybe I could have saved them. Nonsense.What do you remember about
the journey to Switzerland?
On the train there was a girl by the name of
Erma. She was two years younger than me.
She was crying badly. I gave her the only doll
I’d taken. She survived the war; when I later
met her again in the United States I said
“Erma, do you remember that I gave you my
doll?” And she did not remember! At the
time, that was the biggest sacrifice of my life.
I could have killed her!Did you know what would happen
once you arrived?
Not really. The only thing I knew was where
I was going. My grandmother said, “You are
going to get a lot of chocolate.” And I did. We
were sent to Heiden, which is a village over-
looking Lake Constance; during the end of
World War II, I could see Friedrichshafen
[Germany], the city on the other side of the
lake, being bombarded.CONVERSATION WITH DR. RUTH WESTHEIMER
BY KIRSTIN FAWCETTTHE DOCTOR IS IN