Ruth Rappaport

Ruth Rappaport (May 27, 1923 – November 17, 2010) was a Jewish-American librarian. Her mother's cousin was Helena Rubinstein. In 1943 her father died in Buchenwald and her mother probably died in Ravensbrueck.

Rappaport obtained an American visa and went to Seattle in 1938 to live with her uncle, Carl Rubinstein. She graduated from Broadway High School.

Biography In 1948, she lived in Jerusalem and worked briefly as a photographer for Acme News, then became a photograph archivist for the Foreign Press Office of the new state of Israel in Tel Aviv until the end of 1949. She then moved to New York and worked for lawyer Max Lowenthal and assisted him with the publication of his book, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 1950. She moved to Berkeley in 1951 and earned her undergraduate degree in sociology and her master's degree in librarianship from the University of California. In 1959 she began working for the U.S. Air Force, and as such managed a library at Naha Air Base in Okinawa.

After this she worked at the Library of Congress for twenty-three years, beginning in 1970; Its contents are now integrated with the rest of the collections.

She was also a founding member of the Hill Havurah on Capitol Hill.

Most of her papers are held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; there is also the Ruth Rappaport Collection at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center and "Ruth Rappaport papers, 1946-1957" at the University of Washington Special Collections.

Awards and recognition The Ruth Rappaport Wisdom Award was created "to recognize the work of one individual annually that has displayed remarkable warmth, wisdom, and commitment to the Capitol Hill Community."

In 2019, Kate Stewart published a biography of Rappaport, A Well-Read Woman: The Life, Loves, and Legacy of Ruth Rappaport (Little A).

Other resources The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch interview with Ruth Rappaport (2010) The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Ruth Rappaport papers