Most of the saga of our family's German citizenship restoration was unfortunately not recounted in the blog. Here is the full story of Joanne's successful application for restored German citizenship, and of Dan's rejection. Download the article here.
Our founding document is the 50-page memoir "The Ruby Family Histories: The Early Lives of Stanley and Helga Ruby," written by Walter in 2006.
Walter had always been the historian, as well as the most prolific writer, in the family. In the months after our father's death, he took the initiative to interview Helga about details of her life, especially her flight from Europe in 1938-41.
Daughter of Walter Ruby and Selma Ratner. Brother of Stanley. Mother of Wendy, Marsha and Robert. Wife of Milton Felestein and later Ruby Meyer.
Marsha remembers: "When I was a kid, Grammy always took me to all kinds of wonderful places. Grammy didn’t care if it was the Jewish holidays; if you wanted pastries, she would take you to the place on 72nd Street. She would take me to my favorite shows at Radio City Music Hall. Later on, if I wanted to have a date with a boyfriend in the City, she would let me stay over at her place."
That would have been the apartment at 5 Riverside Drive that Selma inherited from Dr. Prager, where she would reside the rest of her life.
Daughter of Abe and Rose Ratner of Albany. Married Walter Ruby. Mother of Joan and Stanley. Loving grandmother to the Ruby and Felenstein children.
For her part, Selma Ruby responded to the tragedy of her husband’s death by continuing to give love—especially to the grandchildren who would begin arriving within about a half decade of Walter’s death.
Walter, Dan, and Joanne Ruby remember Selma with great fondness, but they lived at a geographical distance from her in Pittsburgh and Chicago, and saw her only once a year or less.
It should be acknowledged that we have, at this point, no proof that the Gonif actually existed or that he was in fact the son of the Kovno Rav. If the Rav indeed married as early as 1830, he could certainly have had a son who would have been around 20 at the time of the Crimean War. According to Zalman Alpert, if such a wayward son in fact existed, Rabbi Spektor would likely have preferred not to acknowledge his paternity in the respectable world of Russian Jewry.