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In Focus: Jewish Women In Travel

Photo courtesy of Ruth Gruber |
In February 2001 CBS featured the
true story of Dr. Ruth Gruber in Haven, a mini-series documenting
Gruber’s life as a young, Jewish, American government official who helped
escort almost a thousand Holocaust survivors from Europe to America in 1944.
Ruth Gruber was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1911.
By the age of twenty she had earned three Ph.D.s—one in German Philosophy,
another in Modern English Literature and a third in Art History, all from
the University of Cologne. In 1935, she received a fellowship to study women
under fascist and communist rule. She later began to work for the New
York Herald Tribune and became the first foreign correspondent to fly
through Siberia into the Soviet Artic. She documented her experiences living
among its inhabitants (some of whom were Jews) and later published them in
the book, I Went to the Soviet Artic.
In 1941, after Secretary of the Interior Harold L.
Ickes became aware of Gruber’s outstanding accomplishments, he appointed
her as his Special Assistant. In this role, she carried out a secret mission
to Europe and brought one thousand refugees from Europe to Oswego, New York.
As they traveled from Naples, Italy she recorded their survival stories.
These stories inspired her to write the book Haven.
Dr. Gruber has written thirteen books, seven of
which focus on the subject of Israel and the Middle East from the end
of World War II to the present. She has also spent nearly twenty years
working as foreign correspondent to the New York Herald Tribune.
Dr. Ruth Gruber has shown compassion and bravery in the face of suffering
throughout her career as journalist, lobbyist, government official and
humanitarian.
How to Cite This Page
Jewish Women's Archive. "JWA - Jewish Women In Travel - Ruth Gruber." <http://jwa.org/discover/infocus/travel/grubertravel.html>.
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