MARGARET CARRUTHERS – NURSING SISTER
Margaret came to the offices of the South African Zionist Federation to offer her services as a nurse and reached Israel in the tiny Displaced Persons ship, the “Tetti”. Passengers included some hundreds of Holocaust orphans. The ship hit early winter foul weather and her nursing experience was put to work, caring for the many children suffering from sea-sickness.
Helping her was another nurse and fellow South African passenger Jack Mirwis, a medical student and WW11 Air Force Ground Technician, who ended up as an infantry soldier in the 72nd Battalion. She served in several hospitals, at the end in the underground field hospital of Kibbutz Ruhama.
The Immediate First Surgical Services at Ruhama involved the South African doctors Ivan Barnett and Ossie Treisman, who sometimes called on the services of an Italian Doctor Askerelli, .Medical Officer to an Infantry Unit stationed nearby. Carruthers served there with two medical students from South Africa, Elliot Bader and Harry Miller, as well as the S. African nurses, Merle Gillis and Sylvia Sher.
She married a wounded Israeli soldier, a chemist by profession, whom she had nursed to health. They lived in an abandoned Arab house in Jerusalem. Margaret had two daughters and a son. Simie Weinstein, World War II Army Chaplain, and now Welfare Officer of the Zionist Federation, called on her during a post-war visit to Jerusalem. She was pregnant at the time. Shavuot, the Jewish holiday celebrating the Giving of the Law on Mount Sinai and also the Gathering of the Harvest, was at hand and Weinstein, ever dipping into the Bible, told her the story of Ruth, “Your People shall be My People, Your God My God”, he explained that from Ruth came the House of David
When Margaret’s son was born she wrote to him; “I am glad to inform you the new David has been born”
She died of cancer a few years later.