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A Twist Of Fate
Holocaust survivor and ex-Hitler Youth marry in amazing love story.
Harry Kirsbaum I Contributing Writer
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
Ruder matches an incredible story
painted with broad strokes of history with
incredible detail about his family.
In one scene, he recreates an American
bombing run toward the end of the war that
destroys a train station, which has signifi-
cant implications for his family.
His mother is walking home from school
with her friends when they hear the bomb-
ers overhead. Her friends decide to take
shelter in a church, but she decides she can
make it home in time. Among the bombs
that hit the train station was a bomb that
missed its target and destroyed the church,
killing Marile's friends.
A day later, her father witnesses a group
of Jews cleaning the debris left from the
bombing and locks eyes with an intense-
looking, gaunt Jewish prisoner who turns
out to be Simon, his future son-in-law.
At war's end, the Americans forced
Marile to tour the local camps to see the
total destruction and horror of the Final
Solution. The girl who, before the war,
proudly presented a bouquet of flowers to
Hitler himself, recoiled at what she saw.
She volunteered to work in a convent con-
verted into a hospital, where she cared for
Jewish survivors, including Simon.
Simon, nearly hacked to death just before
his liberation, quickly shows feelings for the
German girl; she senses something, too, but
she's not sure what it is.
The courtship goes through many hard-
ships; her parents are horrified she is see-
ing a Jew, and Simon's survivor friends are
equally horrified.
Rudy is born out of wedlock, and Marile's
old boyfriend appears after being wrongfully
considered killed in action in Russia.
The boyfriend wants to marry Marile, but
shows his true nature when he refers to her
son as a "Jew bastard" She turns her back on
her family, her country and starts a new life
with Simon.
"I'm convinced she saved his life and gave
him something to live foe Ruder said. "He's
educated; he's worldly; he gets into a lot of
trouble, then I came along. We found 50 love
letters from my father to my mother and
translated them all"
The deck was stacked against them,
but they made it anyway, immigrating to
Cleveland in 1953, and raising five children,
8
April 16 • 2015
A Ruder family portrait, circa 1950: top row, Simon and brothers Mendel and Izak;
bottom row, Rudy, Marile, Dolek and Alice, Izak's wife.
three of whom were German-born. His
father died in January 2006, and his mother
passed four months later.
"The marriage of two people of such
oppositional backgrounds is not unique,
but certainly exceedingly rare says Dr.
Guy Stern, head of the Institute of the
Righteous at the Holocaust Memorial Center
in Farmington Hills. "The wife came from
an ideological Nazi family; in fact, she was
selected to be embraced by Hitler when
the Nazi leader visited her hometown. The
father survived Auschwitz and after the
war was nursed back by the former 'Hitler
Youth' The opposition on the wife's side of
the family was fierce out of anti-Semitism
and prejudice. The Jewish family was
equally opposed from motives arising from
the Holocaust"
Compelled To Write
"Writing about my parents was a profoundly
personal experience," Ruder said. "After they
died, I thought I had to write this book. I
had to tell this story"
He got together with his siblings to con-
dense all the stories they were told. Then
he did 18 months of meticulous research,
much of it online through sources such as
JewishGen.com , Red Cross International
Tracing Service, Muhldorf Archives in
Germany, Yad Vashem and at the local
Holocaust Memorial Center, he said.
"Mr. Ruder gathered information from
HMC's strong archival holdings on family
histories and the history of WWII and the
Holocaust" Stern said. "He was also helped
by our well-known archivist, Mrs. Feiga
Weiss. He also drew on our library holdings
and the extensive knowledge of HMC's staff,
including Executive Director Stephen M.
Goldman and many other staff members"
Ruder added, "I visited the National
Holocaust Museum in D.C., and the
National Archives in College Park
[Maryland]. We also had a number of fam-
ily photos, letters and documents"
A resident of Macomb Township, Ruder
is a semi-retired consultant who has worked
with General Motors, IBM and other corpo-
rations. He spent time as an associate pro-
fessor at Cleveland State University teaching
computer programming; but he said his
dream was to write this book, which he self-
published and is available on Amazon and
BarnesandNoble.com.
"It was like putting together a jigsaw puz-
zle" he said of writing. "You knew a little bit
around the edges, the pieces were the same
color; then all of a sudden a lot of the pieces
started falling into place"
Included in his research is an American
officer's report of his father's rescue and
injuries, Nazi documents showing his
father's trail through the camps, his uncles'
German military service, his mother's report
card and Hitler Youth enrollment and his
grandfather's railroad service.
"Did I take some poetic license? I had
to" he said. "I wasn't there verbatim, but
I understood the environment. The book
had to be written; the story had to be
told:'
❑
"The Long Journey To Cleveland" is available on
Amazon.com or at www.phoenixbookworks.com .
Yom HaShoah
Commemoration
Yom HaShoah (Holocaust
Remembrance Day) begins
today (April 16) at sundown. The
Holocaust Memorial Center in
Farmington Hills will hold a corn-
munitywide commemoration at 1
p.m. Sunday, April 19. Admission
fees will be waived for the day
and valet parking will be compli-
mentary. For more information,
contact Selma Silverman at 248-
553-2400, ext.112 or selma.
silverman@holocaustcenter.org .