Brooklyn, NY – Journalist And Author Ruth Gruber Dies In NY At Age 105

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    Dr. Ruth Gruber, left, and actress Natasha Richardson pose for a photo Jan. 9, 2001, at the Ritz Carlton Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, Calif. Richardson portrays Gruber in the CBS miniseries, "Haven," which recreates Gruber's struggle to get the U. S. government to accept refugees from the Holocaust and allow them to become citizens. It airs Sunday, Feb. 11, and Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2001, at 9 p.m., EST. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)Brooklyn, NY – When Ruth Gruber saw a report during World War II that 1,000 Jewish refugees were being brought to the United States, she rushed straight to her job with the Secretary of the Interior.

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    “I got rid of my breakfast and rushed to the office and said, ‘I have to see the Secretary.’ I told him, ‘Somebody has to go over and hold their hands; they’re going to be terrified,'” Gruber said in a 2010 interview in The Sunday Telegraph of London.

    That somebody turned out to be her, and as she accompanied the refugees to the U.S., she interviewed them, which became the basis of “Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America,” one of her many books but only one part of Gruber’s long, trailblazing life.

    The journalist and humanitarian died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan, according to her editor, Philip Turner. She was 105.

    Gruber, who was born in Brooklyn, started college at New York University at age 15 and had earned a Ph.D. from the University of Cologne in Germany by the time she was 20. Her dissertation was on Virginia Woolf, whom she later met.

    Gruber then went into journalism, becoming a foreign correspondent and visiting places including the Soviet Arctic and Siberia. She produced both words and photographs.

    During World War II, she was appointed special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, for whom she carried out a study to see if returning veterans could settle in Alaska.

    In 1944, Gruber got involved in a mission to bring a group of 1,000 Jewish refugees from Europe to the United States. She lobbied fiercely for the refugees to be given American citizenship, which they eventually were granted.

    She returned to journalism after the war, covering stories such as the plight of other Jewish refugees and the impetus to allow some to settle in what was then Palestine.

    “I thought that wherever there was injustice we should fight it, and what better tool than journalism? I always carried my little Hermes typewriter that weighed about two pounds and my two cameras,” she said in the Sunday Telegraph interview.

    She was honored with awards from organizations including the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance.

    Gruber married twice; both of her husbands died before her. She is survived by her son and daughter from her first marriage


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    7 years ago

    I saw the movie “Haven”, in 2001, which portrayed the good deeds which Ruth Gruber, performed. She accompanied the 1000 Jewish refugees from Europe to the USA, where they were housed at Ft. Oswego, in upstate NY. The refugees had to endure a lot of anti-semitism on the way over to the USA on the ship, as well as from the local residents, near Ft. Oswego. It was FDR’s intention to send them all back to Europe, once World War Two ended. However, after FDR’s death, and after the Nazis surrendered, Ruth Gruber personally intervened on their behalf with President Harry S. Truman. Truman was indeed a good friend to the Jews, and he ordered that all of the 1000 Jewish refugees be allowed to remain in the USA. Ultimately, they became citizens. Recently, they, along with their children and grandchildren (now numbering in the thousands), held a reunion. It should be noted that in 1979, when Menachem Begin signed a peace treaty with Egypt, at the White House, he acknowledged Ruth Gruber’s presence, at the signing ceremony.