Dr. Ella Ruth Dotan, née Bamberger, was a granddaughter of Kissingen’s Rabbi of many years, Moses Löb Bamberger. She was born in Würzburg on February 14, 1912 as the second of four children of Mendel Hirsch Bamberger and his wife Rachel, née Winter. The family lived in Bad Kissingen in Ludwigstrasse, where her father practiced as a dentist. Together with his brother Isaak Bamberger who practiced as a doctor he belonged to the few Zionists in Bad Kissingen. In their liberal attitude, they were also very different from the orthodox family of their father.

Therefore, Ruth Bamberger and her older sister also belonged to the first girls who attended Kissingen Realschule in the Weimar Republic. In May 1922, Ruth changed from the Mary Ward Institute, a school entirely for girls, to Realschule, where she graduated after class 6 in 1928. Her teachers characterize her as a “diligent student” with “good and appealing marks throughout” as well as “impeccable behavior”. According to her student file, she continued her education in a class 7 but it can’t be found out what school she attended (See: Student Files of Jack-Steinberger-Gymnasium).

Not much is to be found on her later curriculum vitae. In October 1934, Ruth Bamberger left Bad Kissingen and moved to Prague. In August 1937, she emigrated to Palestine and there lived with her uncle Isaak in Jerusalem, Jesayastrasse 84. Obviously, she had studied medicine before her emigration, because in her immigration file ‘doctor’ is found as her occupation and her name also includes the title ‘Dr.’.

In 1942, she married Menashe Dotan; they had two children together. He was born in Gotha, Thuringia, in 1917 and called himself Menashe Tikhler in the immigration documents. The family lived in Tel Aviv.

Ella Ruth Dotan died in Peta Tikva/Israel in 1957 at the age of 45. Her husband Menashe survived her by four decades; he died in Tel Aviv in 1997.