Ruth Gruber

Infobox Writer
name = Ruth Gruber

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caption = Ruth Gruber
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birthdate = Birth date and age|1911|9|30|mf=y
birthplace = New York City, New York, United States
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occupation = Journalist, photographer, writer, humanitarian and US government official
nationality = American
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Ruth Gruber (born September 30, 1911) is an American journalist, photographer, writer, humanitarian and a former United States government official.

Early life

Ruth Gruber was born in Brooklyn, New York, one of five children of Russian Jewish immigrant parents David and Gussie Gruber. She dreamed to be a writer and was encouraged by her parents to obtain higher education. At the age of eighteen she won a postgraduate fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. [ [http://www.womenworking.com/feature/index.php?id=86 Breaking Ground: Dr. Ruth Gruber] (womenworking.com)] In 1931, she won another fellowship from the Institute of International Education to study in Cologne, Germany. [ [http://www.iie.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Programs7/SRF/Ruth_Gruber.htm Ruth Gruber] (Institute of International Education)] [ [http://www.iie.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Faces_of_IIE1/Ruth_Gruber1.htm Dr. Ruth Gruber receives IIE's First Annual Fritz Redlich Alumni Award] ] She received a Ph.D in one year, becoming the youngest person in the world to receive a doctorate. [http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=297 Chapter 107. "Mother" Ruth's Journeys] (American Jewish Historical Society)] By the age of twenty Ruth Gruber earned a Ph.D degree from the University of Cologne: in German Philosophy, in Modern English Literature and in Art History. During this time, Gruber had an extensive relationship with Virginia Woolf.While in Germany, Gruber witnessed Nazi rallies and after completing her studies and returning to America, she brought the awareness of the dangers of Nazism.Gruber's writing career began in 1932. In 1935, "The New York Herald Tribune" asked her to write a feature series about women under Fascism and Communism. While working for "Herald Tribune", she became the first foreign correspondent to fly through Siberia into the Soviet Arctic.

pecial Assistant to the Secretary of the Interior

During World War II, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes appointed Ruth Gruber as his Special Assistant. In this role, she carried out a study on the prospects of Alaska for homesteading G.I.s after the war. [ [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/alaska/peopleevents/e_travelers.html Building the Alaska Highway. Americans and Others Travel to Alaska] (PBS)] In 1944, she was assigned a secret mission to Europe to bring one thousand Jewish refugees and wounded American soldiers from Italy to the US. Ickes made her "a simulated general", so in case the military aircraft she flew in was shot down and she was caught by the Nazis, she would be kept alive according to the Geneva Convention. [Gruber, Ruth (1999): "Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched the Nation", p.4 ISBN 0-8129-3154-8] Throughout the voyage, the Army troop transport "Henry Gibbins" was hunted by Nazi seaplanes and U-boats. Ruth Gruber's book "Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America" was based on case histories she recorded as she interviewed the refugees.

Since the US Congress refused to lift the quota on Jewish immigration to the United States from Europe, US President Roosevelt acted by executive authority and invited the group of one thousand to visit America. The refugees were to be guests of the President and upon arriving in New York, they were transferred to Fort Ontario, a decommissioned army training base near Oswego, NY and locked behind a chain link fence with barbed wire. While US government agencies argued about whether they should be allowed to stay or, at some point, be deported to Europe, Gruber lobbied to keep them through the end of the war. It wasn't until January 1946 that the decision was made to allow them to apply for American residency. This was the only attempt by the United States to shelter Jewish refugees during the war.

A 2001 film called "Haven" was based on Gruber's book, with Natasha Richardson portraying Ruth Gruber.

Post-war career

In 1946, Gruber took leave from her federal post to return to journalism. "The New York Post" asked her to cover the work of a newly created Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. The Committee was to decide the fate of 100,000 European Jewish refugees who were living in European camps as displaced persons (DP). Harry Truman pressed Great Britain to open the doors of British Mandate of Palestine. The committee members spent four months in Europe, Palestine and the Arab countries and another month in Switzerland digesting their experiences. At the end of its deliberations, the committee's twelve members unanimously agreed that Britain should allow 100,000 Jewish immigrants to settle in Palestine. British foreign minister Ernest Bevin rejected the finding.

Eventually the issue was taken up by the recently established United Nations, which appointed a Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). Gruber accompanied UNSCOP as a correspondent for the "New York Herald".

Exodus 1947

Gruber witnessed the Exodus 1947 ship entering the Haifa harbor after it was attacked by the Royal Navy while making an attempt to deliver 4,500 Jewish refugees. To meet the Exodus refugees Gruber flew to Cyprus, where she witnessed and photographed Jewish refugees detained by the British. However the British sent the Exodus prisoners to Port de Bouc in France and Gruber went there. The prisoners refused to disembark and after 18 days standoff, the British decided to ship the Jews back to Germany. Out of many journalists from around the world reporting on the affair, Ruth Gruber alone was allowed by the British to accompany the DPs back to Germany. Aboard the prison ship "Runnymede Park", Gruber photographed the refugees, confined in a wire cage with barbed wire on top, defiantly raising a Union Jack flag on which they had painted a swastika.

After 1950

In 1951, Ruth Gruber got married. She gave birth to two children and continued her journalistic travels. She wrote a popular column for "Hadassah Magazine," "Diary of an American Housewife." [http://www.ajhs.org/publications/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=298 Chapter 108. Ruth Gruber's Exodus: Part II] (American Jewish Historical Society)]

In 1978 she spent a year in Israel writing "Raquela: A Woman of Israel," about an Israeli nurse, Raquela Prywes, who worked in a British detention camp and in a hospital in Beersheba. This book won the National Jewish Book Award in 1979 for Best Book on Israel.

In 1985, at the age of 74 she visited isolated Jewish villages in Ethiopia and described the rescue of the Ethiopian Jews in "Rescue: The Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews". Ruth Gruber has received many awards for her writing and humanitarian acts, including the Na'amat Golda Meir Human Rights Award and awards from the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance.

In 1991, Ruth Gruber published volume one of her autobiography "Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent."

Ruth Gruber lives in New York City.

Publications

Books

* "Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched the Nation", (Reprint) 2007
* "Witness: One of the Great Correspondents of the Twentieth Century Tells Her Story" Schocken (2007) ISBN 0805242430
* "Virginia Woolf: The Will To Create As A Woman", 2005
* "Inside of Time: My Journey from Alaska to Israel", 2002, 2004
* "Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched the Nation", 1999 (ISBN 0-8129-3154-8)
* "Ahead of Time: My Early Years As a Foreign Correspondent", 1991, 2001
* "Rescue: The Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews", 1987
* "Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America", 1983, 2000
* "Raquela: A Woman of Israel", 1978, 1985, 1993, 2000
* "They Came to Stay" (coauthor: Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky), 1976
* "Die Bauern-Passion Von Waal" (coauthors: Ursula Zeidler, Gerhard Eberts), 1976
* "Felisa Rincon De Gautier: The Mayor of San Juan", 1972
* "Puerto Rico: island of promise"
* "Israel on the seventh day", 1968
* "Israel today: Land of many nations", 1958
* "Israel without tears", 1950
* "Destination Palestine: The story of the Haganah ship Exodus 1947", 1948
* "I Went To The Soviet Union", 1944
* "I Went to the Soviet Arctic", 1939, 1991

References

External links

* [http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/?content=20080117 Interview with Ruth Gruber] from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
* [http://womennewsnetwork.net/2007/08/21/a-lifes-worth-of-living-witnessing-the-life-of-foreign-correspondent-ruth-gruber-in-her-new-book-witness/"A Life's Worth of Living - Witnessing the Life of Foreign Correspondent, Ruth Gruber, in Her New Book "WITNESS"] WNN - Women News Network, 21 August, 2007
* [http://www.theworld.org/?q=node/9985 Ruth Gruber interview 9 May, 2007] - BBC news, "The World" radio show.
* [http://moondance.org/2006/summer2006/reviews/woolf.html Charting a New Map Seventy Years Later-Ruth Gruber in the Quest for Virginia Woolf] by Lys Anzia 2006 Moondance magazine.
* [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/gruber.html Ruth Gruber] (Jewish Virtual Library)
* [http://www.jwa.org/discover/today/news/gruber/ Ruth Gruber] (Jewish Women's Archive)
* [http://www.bookslut.com/features/2005_10_006773.php A Circle Completed: Ruth Gruber and Virginia Woolf]
* [http://history1900s.about.com/library/holocaust/blgruber.htm Chat with Ruth Gruber] (About.com>Education>20th Century History)
* [http://www.miriamscup.com/GruberBiog.htm Miriam's Cup: Biography. Ruth Gruber]
* [http://www.forward.com/articles/as-time-goes-by-ruth-gruber-reflects/ As Time Goes By: Ruth Gruber Reflects] by Masha Leon ("The Forward", April 11, 2003
* [http://www.sdjewishjournal.com/stories/nov03_1.html Witness to Exodus] by Judd Handler (San Diego Jewish Journal)
* [http://www.oswego.edu/alumni/publications/magazine/haven.pdf When Oswego Was a Haven] (State University of New York at Oswego)
* [http://www.nationalreview.com/blyth/blyth200507011106.asp A Woman of Substance. Ruth Gruber flourishes, even in her 90s] by Myrna Blyth. July 01, 2005