The Book and the Doll
What would you bring if you had only a few minutes to pack your belongings before running for your life? The things we keep from our childhoods tell stories. ruth weiss, even in her old age, kept two relics of her childhood: an ancient book and a very special doll.
In 1938, Hitler had just annexed Austria, where ten-year-old ruth weiss and her family had lived for the last five years. Immediately, her father tried to get them out of the country. Among the few things she packed that night was a copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales and her German-made doll, Susi, her most treasured possessions in a fracturing world.
A cinema still from the movie “ruth weiss: the beat goddess” of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales book ruth weiss got from her parents in 1935.
The book was a Hanukkah gift from her parents, over a thousand pages long. ruth weiss compared her own childhood to a fairytale, exploring the woods outside of Vienna and finding magic and secrets in nature.
Susi was made by a German doll company called Schildkröt, or Turtle Shell, which began fashioning the dolls out of high-quality celluloid in 1896, and has continued into the present day. When the expensive doll was gifted to her, ruth says, her parents warned her that it would not be replaced if it was lost or broken.
A cinema still from the movie “ruth weiss: the beat goddess” of Susi, ruth weiss’s only doll she had for over 75 years! You can see it on display at the Beat Museum in San Francisco. The doll is a pale yellow with blonde short hair and a brown button-down dress.
She packed the doll and book, and her family embarked on their original escape plan, taking a boat to Switzerland. The boat sank and the Swiss shot at them to warn them to go back to where they came from. They were sent to Innsbruck, where they were stranded with no money, and no Visas.
By chance, they met a kind woman who gave them a safe room to harbor in for the night and train tickets to Holland. They managed to get their Visas and board one of the last boats to the United States on December 31st, 1938. ruth's extended family were less fortunate, and would die during the Holocaust.
Traveling across the Atlantic Ocean, ruth weiss dropped the doll and Susi’s head cracked. With all the turmoil happening in the world at the time, ruth weiss was most sad about losing her doll, because her parents had told her that she wouldn’t be able to get another doll with celluloid hands and the small Turtle Shell logo back in the United States.
A cinema still from the movie “ruth weiss: the beat goddess” of ruth weiss holding Susi in 2017.
Yet, not long after they arrived, Susi was back. Her parents had written to a friend who was also escaping Europe for the United States, and they asked her to bring along another Turtle Shell doll. It was a fairy tale ending, having the same Susi back, by ruth’s side for a new start in a new country.