Family Story Finder
The sweep of family history across the generations
A milliner's daughter in Long Beach
Elly worked hard to earn a living as a hat maker while Helga adapted easily at Julia Richmond High School. In the summer, they took a room in a beach town on Long Island.
Action at a distance
Stan's Mathematica notebooks document his later work and speculations
Ed Eilertsen tribute puzzle
Ed loved crosswords, so Dan Ruby created a tribute puzzle for his memorial. Kate and Twyla were the clue crew.
Green Valley Drive—our exurban childhood
Our years in Pittsburgh were spent in a tract house in a natural wonderland—backed up against a family farm and an equestrian estate.
Helga at the Theodor Herzl School
Amid the chaos of the Nazi period, the Zionist school in Charlottenburg taught skills and values that lasted a lifetime
Internment on the Isle of Man
German refugees in the UK, even Jews like Gerhart Feidt, were deemed potential enemy aliens
Lest we forget—family Holocaust testimony
Remembering our Ringel and Wohlgemuth/Paechter family members who perished in the Shoah.
Liberal values in the 1960s
From civil rights to war resistance to arms control, Ruby family members embraced liberal social causes
Lisbon to New York—with a detour to Havana
The Ringel family crossed from Lisbon on the SS Guine—but their entry to the U.S. was anything but routine
Love conquers all as Gerhard marries Ilse
Two young Berliners make a modern marriage—with lasting consequences
Margot Dränger's survival story
Helga's second cousin suffered unimaginable traumas in and around Krakow from 1939 to 1945. She survived and gave testimony later in life
Meeting Harriet Berkowitz
Harriet Berkowitz was doubly distanced from her Rabinowitz roots, first by her father’s partial family estrangement and then by his divorce. But she shared a trove of precious family documents and childhood memories after discovering this blog.
Memories of young Stan
Stan was smart and fresh, with something to say about almost anything
Motives for mercy—the consuls of Toulouse
In July 1940, consular officials from three nations conspired to open an escape route for Jews out of occupied France. Why did they do it?
Our family during the Nazi years in Berlin
During the first five years of Hitler's reign of terror, Jewish families of Berlin faced one repression after another.
Stan finds love outside of a 20-block radius
Home from the war, Stan Ruby was a graduate student in physics at Columbia University. Helga Ringel was a smart, pretty war refugee from Berlin
The Kaufhaus at Schloßstraße 97
In 1907, Moritz Feidt built a department store in Berlin Stieglitz. It still stands today
The physics experiment that went wrong
How and why did Stan Ruby's important post-graduate research go wrong, and what impact did it have on his career in physics?
The problem with anti-ballistic missiles
Stanley Ruby entered the public debate over nuclear missile technology in 1968-69.
Ze'ev and Penina Sharon of Kibbutz Afeq
A pioneer to Palestine in 1936, Ze’ev married Penina and they did their part to build the state of Israel as founders of Kibbutz Afek.