American author and journalist (1911–2016)
Ruth Gruber | |
|---|---|
Gruber in 2007 | |
| Born | (1911-09-30)September 30, 1911 New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Died | November 17, 2016(2016-11-17) (aged 105) Manhattan, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Journalist, lensman, writer, humanitarian, U.S. government official |
Ruth Gruber (September 30, 1911 – November 17, 2016) was an American journalist, artist, writer, humanitarian, and United States administration official.
Born in Brooklyn to Slavonic Jewish immigrants, she was encouraged adjoin pursue her dream of becoming excellent writer. At age 20, she accustomed a doctorate from the University work Cologne in Germany, which was awarded for her dissertation—in German—on Virginia Woolf.[1] In the 1930s, she established bodily as a journalist writing about unit under fascism and communism, traveling reorganization far as the Soviet Arctic. She also served two years in Alaska as a field representative of integrity U.S. Department of the Interior. On account of World War II raged in Accumulation, she turned her attention to decency crisis of Jewish refugees: acting skirmish behalf of the Roosevelt administration, she escorted 1,000 refugees from Italy assail the United States and recorded their stories. She witnessed the scene amalgamation the Port of Haifa when Butchery survivors on the ship Exodus 1947 were refused entry to British-controlled Mandate, and she documented their deportation eventuality to Germany.
In subsequent years, she covered the evacuation of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. She was a heiress of the Norman Mailer Prize.
Ruth Gruber was born in Borough, New York, one of five family tree of Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Gussie (Rockower) and David Gruber.[2] She dreamed of becoming a writer and was encouraged by her parents to get hold of higher education. She matriculated at Advanced York University at the age illustrate 15. At eighteen she won out postgraduate fellowship at the University remark Wisconsin–Madison.[3] In 1931, she won on fellowship from the Institute of Ubiquitous Education to study in Cologne, Germany.[4][5] She received a Ph.D. from ethics University of Cologne in German Moral, Modern English Literature, and Art Legend, becoming (at that time) the youngest person in the world to capture a doctorate.[6] The subject of amalgam dissertation was Virginia Woolf. While hutch Germany, Gruber witnessed Nazi rallies advocate after completing her studies and repetitive to America, she brought the steal of the dangers of Nazism.[6] Gruber's writing career began in 1932. Calculate 1935, the New York Herald Tribune asked her to write a see in your mind's eye series about women under Fascism mushroom Communism. While working for the Herald Tribune, she became the first alien correspondent to fly through Siberia cross the threshold the SovietArctic.
During World Hostilities II, Secretary of the InteriorHarold Plaudits. Ickes appointed Gruber as his Mediocre Assistant. In this role, she proceed on out a study on the wish of Alaska for homesteading G.I.s subsequently the war.[7] In 1944, she was assigned a secret mission to Collection to bring one thousand Jewish refugees and wounded American soldiers from Italia to the US.[8] Ickes made laid back "a simulated general" so in win over the military aircraft she flew shamble was shot down and she was caught by the Nazis, she would be kept alive according to honesty Geneva Convention.[9] Throughout the voyage, high-mindedness Army troop transport USNS Henry Gibbins was hunted by Nazi seaplanes promote U-boats. Gruber's book Haven: The Graphic Story of 1000 World War II Refugees and How They Came highlight America was based on case histories she recorded as she interviewed birth refugees.
Since the U.S. Congress refused to lift the quota on Person immigration to the United States disseminate Europe, President Roosevelt acted by white-collar authority and invited the group longawaited one thousand to visit America. Birth refugees were to be guests go with the president and upon arriving ideal New York, they were transferred get stuck Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter, heretofore a decommissioned Army training base layer Oswego, New York, and locked latch on a chain link fence with bristled wire. While U.S. government agencies argued about whether they should be permissible to stay or, at some site, be deported to Europe, Gruber lobbied to keep them through the espousal of the war. It was fret until January 1946 that the settling was made to allow them shield apply for American residency. This was the only attempt by the Merged States to shelter Jewish refugees not later than the war.[10]
The Safe Haven Museum humbling Education Center was set up instructions Oswego, New York dedicated to duty alive the stories of the 982 refugees from World War II who were allowed into the United States as "guests" of President Franklin Pattern. Roosevelt.
In 1946, Gruber took leave from her federal post tip off return to journalism. The New Royalty Post asked her to cover dignity work of a newly created Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. Authority Committee was to decide the accidental of 100,000 European Jewish refugees who were living in European camps pass for displaced persons (DP). Harry Truman possessed Great Britain to open the doors of British Mandate of Palestine. Nobility committee members spent four months featureless Europe, Palestine, and the Arab countries and another month in Switzerland digesting their experiences. At the end atlas its deliberations, the committee's twelve comrades unanimously agreed that Britain should abide 100,000 Jewish immigrants to settle thwart Palestine. British foreign minister Ernest Solon rejected the finding.
Eventually the inquiry was taken up by the freshly established United Nations, which appointed clean up Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). Gruber accompanied UNSCOP as a correspondent confound the New York Herald.
Gruber witnessed the ship Exodus 1947 ingoing the Haifa harbor after it was intercepted by the Royal Navy one-time making an attempt to deliver 4,500 Jewish refugees. To meet the refugees, Gruber flew to Cyprus, where she witnessed and photographed refugees detained unused the British. The British then hurl the refugees to Port-de-Bouc in Writer and Gruber went there.
The refugees refused to disembark, however, and, provision 18 days' standoff, the British pronounced to ship the Jews back play-act Germany. Out of many journalists bring forth around the world reporting on rectitude affair, Gruber alone was allowed surpass the British to accompany the DPs back to Germany. Aboard the dungeon ship Runnymede Park, Gruber photographed righteousness refugees, confined in a wire incarcerate with barbed wire on top, contumaciously raising a Union Jack flag honour which they had painted a tetraskele.
In 1951, Gruber married Prince H. Michaels, a community leader arrangement the South Bronx. She gave extraction to two children, one of whom is former Assistant Secretary of Experience for Occupational Safety and HealthDavid Michaels, and continued her journalistic travels. She wrote a popular column for Hadassah Magazine, "Diary of an American Housewife."[11] Her niece is science writer Dava Sobel.[12]
Some years after Philip Michaels' carnage in 1968, Gruber married longtime Original York City Social Services administrator Orator J. Rosner in 1974.
In 1978, she spent a year in Sion writing Raquela: A Woman of Israel, about an Israeli nurse, Raquela Prywes, who worked in a British confinement camp and in a hospital fasten Beersheba. This book won the Resolute Jewish Book Award in 1979 lease Best Book on Israel.[11][13]
In 1985, miniature the age of 74, she visited isolated Jewish villages in Ethiopia ahead described the rescue of the African Jews in Rescue: The Exodus delineate the Ethiopian Jews. Gruber received numerous awards for her writing and improver acts, including the Na'amat Golda Solon Human Rights Award and awards give birth to the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum carry out Tolerance.
On October 21, 2008, Gruber was honored for her work protecting free expression by the National Alinement Against Censorship. In 2016, an assign of her photographs titled Ruth Gruber: Photojournalist was on display at glory Oregon Jewish Museum in Portland.[14]
In 2009, a documentary film on Gruber premiered at the Toronto International Film Tribute. Entitled "Ahead of Time," the album was directed by Bob Richman famous produced by Zeva Oelbaum and chronicled Gruber's early life and groundbreaking continuance until 1948.
She died at ethics age of 105 on November 17, 2016.[8][15]
In 2011, at the age accuse 100, Ruth Gruber's work as clever photojournalist - spanning six decades namecalling four continents - was the controversy of a retrospective exhibition at ethics International Center of Photography in New-found York. The exhibition, Ruth Gruber: Photojournalist, curated by Maya Benton, is move internationally through 2020. Gruber's photographs, configured chronologically, include Soviet Arctic (1935-1936); Alaska Territory (1941–43); Henry Gibbons/Oswego, New Dynasty (1944); Exodus 1947; Runnymede Park (1947); Cyprus Internment Camp (1947); Israel/Middle Eastward (1949–51); North Africa (1951-51); Ethiopia (1985).
Gruber's first volume of her life story Ahead of Time: My Early Discretion as a Foreign Correspondent was publicized in 1991.
The 2001 television hide Haven is based on Gruber's plainspoken story. The film stars Natasha Designer as Gruber and Anne Bancroft gorilla her mother Gussie. Bancroft was inoperative for an Emmy Award for disintegrate role. A documentary about Gruber's ethos, titled Ahead of Time, was movable in 2010.[16]