Ruth Weiss

On Friday morning, my class took a trip to go visit Ruth Weiss. There had been talk about this all week, and from what I could understand, everyone was just excited to miss an entire school day… even if it meant listening to some old lady talk for a few hours. So we bundled up and headed into the windy morning together (I’m definitely starting to feel a little more comfortable in the chillier weather!). My German teacher guided us through a maze of cobblestone streets until we finally reached our destination. A green canopy blocked most of the sunlight in a room which I don’t know the English word for. These rooms are quite common in Austria, and my host mom loves them, so I’ve seen my fair share of them. They are basically an outdoor room in the center of a building complex that usually has a beautiful garden or fountain. This one was by far the biggest I have seen, and had sort of a magical feeling due to the natural ceiling overhead.

A young woman told us to take our seats, and she gave us a slight introduction, which I actually understood (amazing I know)! I learned the ‘old woman’ that would be speaking to us lived in Vienna at the beginning of World War II as a Jew. Suddenly I knew that this was going to be a cool experience, even if my peers didn’t seem too interested. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man of about 70 followed by a short old lady with green hair. They both looked pretty haggard and carried large bags, and I automatically assumed they were two of Vienna’s countless homeless citizens. So you can imagine my shock when the pair came straight to center stage and took their places in front of the microphones. WHAT was going on? Maybe I didn’t understand as well as I thought I did. The sound of ruffled papers filled the room as poem after poem was handed to each of us. The poems were in English and carried some heavy images from the Holocaust. I looked at this frail old woman in the front of the room, blue fingernails and all, and had a whole new appreciation for her. Ever since I arrived in Vienna, I have been judging. Should I wear shoes like hers? Is that jacket in fashion? Jessie, you should probably avoid the strange looking couple with blue mouths…. But I learned a whole new lesson that day. Making assumptions about all the people I see in this city is simply unfair. I have no way of knowing what these people have endured, and it is certainly not my place to judge them for it. I came to discover that Ruth’s hair was dyed green to signify her protest against war. She took the idea from a movie about a war orphan she had seen as a child.

Ruth proceeded to read her poems to us with her partner keeping beat with a drum made from a hollowed tree. The scene had a beat nick vibe to it, and I immediately thought about Ben McLaughlin, my art teacher always talking about how during this time period, people snapped instead of clapped. And sure enough, we were asked to snap at the end of her performance rather than clap. I grew to learn Ruth is a quite famous poet for her time, and I enjoyed listening to her life story. She spoke in English and I felt I could connect with her stories about being the new kid, in a new country, trying to figure out a new language.

After we finished class discussion, Ruth discovered I was from the States and she immediately came up to talk to me. We sat and discussed several aspects of life, and her anti-war, all mother nature, loving vibes reminded me of some of my favorite hippies back home. The entire conversation her frail hands desperately grasped mine. I looked down at those hands that had seen 84 years of life, and I wanted to hear all the stories she had to tell. Unfortunately time could never allow me to hear all the stories, so she left me with a big hug and some words of wisdom. “Don’t give up yet kid.”