They Could Do It

As men rushed off to war in Europe, Ruth Grannick took on a new mission back home — top-secret message decoding for the U.S. Navy. Laura Levine took a job as a lathe operator.

Levine and Grannick are two of seven New Haven women whose World War II experiences will be recounted as part of a free event taking place at the New Haven Museum Sunday beginning at 2 p.m.: Bullets, Bandages, and Making WAVES: Jewish Women in WWII. The Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven (JHSGNH) is putting on the event as its third annual Judith Ann Schiff Women’s History Program.

“Most of the women were on the home front, but their lives were changed drastically when a lot of the men enlisted and were drafted and went overseas. Some of them enlisted, and some of them became Rosie the Riveters working in factories making munitions to support the war effort,” Rhoda Zahler Samuel said Thursday during a discussion on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. JHSGNH Managing Archivist Nicole Zador and Yale history professor Jennifer Klein, who will speak at Sunday’s event, joined the conversation.

Samuel and other event organizers drew on oral histories Samuel did with the women (two of whom are still alive) back in 2008. The event includes displays of photographs and documents as well as an historical overview by Klein. (Full disclosure: One of the event organizers and presenters is Carole Bass, to whom I am married.) 

Levine’s story mirrored that of women across the nation, when they were called on to fill higher-paying skilled (and often unionized) jobs previously dominated by men.

“Auto factories had been converted to make tanks and airplanes. They were doing that kind of work. They were working on armaments, bombshells. They worked in shipyards now as welders,” Klein noted on ​“Dateline.”

“Both the employers and the government decided, ​‘OK, now we’ll just manipulate the gender categories to fit this need.’ Instead of saying women were too weak or couldn’t learn technical skills, now they would say, ​‘Women have these delicate fingers. They can really do the work on circuit boards.’ Or ​‘Women can actually stitch together the bomb plates.’ ”

Klein noted that an equal pay order was issued in 1944 for women working in the jobs.

When the men returned home, women left those jobs. Many returned to a previous life routine. But their wartime experience would reverberate for generations — a topic you can hear more about in the below video of the full conversation with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven’s Rhoda Zahler Samuel, Nicole Zador, and Jennifer Klein on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of ​“Dateline New Haven.”