Archives West Finding Aid

Ruth Rappaport was born on May 27, 1923 in Leipzig, Saxony, and died on November 10, 2010, in Washington, D.C. She migrated to the United States in 1933 on the S.S. Veedam to live with her uncle, Carl Rubinstein, who owned a salmon canning company. Her uncle's son, Sam, eventually took over the business and became a local philanthropist. After graduating from Broadway High School in Seattle, Washington, she went to a local business college and then studied part-time at the University of Washington. She worked for the USO during the war and as an editor for the Jewish Transcript. In 1947 she moved to San Francisco and became a secretary for the Zionist Organization of America. She then moved to Jerusalem where she lived from 1948 to 1950. She served as a correspondent for the Jewish Transcript and as a photographer and started Israel's first photograph archive. Upon returning to the United States, she attended the University of California, Berkeley and received her B.A. in Sociology and her Master's in Librarianship, graduating in 1958. She worked for the military in Asia and later worked as a librarian at the Library of Congress from 1970-1992.