Ruth Barnett | Akateeminen Kirjakauppa

Ruth Barnett's autobiography starts in 1939, at the age of four in Berlin, when her parents sent her to Britain on the Kindertransport to escape the Nazis because of her father's Jewish background. She describes, in wonderful detail, her early memories of Germany, and how she grew up a farm girl, in rural southern England, not knowing for sure if her parents were alive or dead. She had three sets of foster families, each of whom she thought were going to adopt her, when her parents unexpectedly turned up, in 1949, and, against her will, forced her to return to Germany. Her father, who was a judge in Mainz had taken out a court order to bring her 'home'. Ruth found this very traumatic. She later learns that he had converted to Christianity before the war but still had to flee to Shanghai to escape the Nazis. But her mother, who was not Jewish, had stayed in Germany and joined in protests against deportations.
Her account is full of fascinating insights and observations - of her search for her identity, her difficult relationship with her parents, many arguments with them when she decided to convert to Judaism and marry a Jewish man, and her experience of living in Britain and in Germany after the war in the shadow of the Holocaust. She describes how her subsequent career as a teacher and psychotherapist was affected by her early experiences but her expertise also enables her to recall her conflicting feelings as she felt them at the time in an authentic way and she shows how she channelled her energies to make a successful life and career for herself. She now gives talks about the Holocaust and shares her testimony in schools and colleges. She will be talking about her book at Jewish Book Week, London on March 3rd, 2010.