Paul Winick

Finding Ruth Paul Winick

Finding Ruth is the memoir of a young boy cajoled into a profession for which he has no desire. He hates medical school and chooses pediatrics as the most interesting of bad choices. He uses his love for baseball to interact with a terminally ill eleven year old. The boy teaches the fledgling physician about compassion and the need to listen to the hopes and dreams of patients even though they are children. A passion for pediatrics is born. The memoir also deals with an adolescent trying to forgive himself for thinking he caused his mother's death because of an argument they had the night before her fatal stroke. He vows to fulfill his mother's dream of one day visiting Israel. He forgets the vow, but is reminded of it by the anti-Semitism he experiences along the way. Despite a busy practice, he fulfills the vow, and learns that he lost an eleven year old cousin in the Holocaust. Previously, he thought his family had been immune from Nazi atrocities. As the memoir ends, his son is the same age as his dead cousin. The boy is standing in front of a glass column in Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. It contains a baby's booty . He is mouthing in disbelief the inscription which represents the number of children lost in the Holocaust, "Children, one and a half million. Children, one and a half million."