Ruth Gruber

A Trailblazing Journalist and Humanitarian 

Ruth Gruber was born on September 30, 1911, in Brooklyn, New York, to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. From an early age, she exhibited an insatiable curiosity and an exceptional intellect. She graduated from New York University at age eighteen and in 1930 won a fellowship to the University of Wisconsin, where she received her MA in German and English literature. In 1931, Gruber received a fellowship from the University of Cologne in Germany. Her parents pleaded with her not to go; they were concerned with the unsettling times during the Weimar Republic and the growth of the Nazi party. Nevertheless, she went to Cologne and took courses in German philosophy, modern English literature, and art history. She also attended Nazi rallies, her American passport in her purse, a tiny American flag on her lapel. She listened, appalled, as Adolf Hitler ranted hysterically against Americans and even more hysterically against Jews. Gruber’s professors asked her to stay and study for a PhD, which she earned at just 20 years old, making her one of the youngest people to earn a doctorate at that time. Her dissertation focused on the British writer Virginia Woolf, and it was published as a book, marking the start of her prolific writing career. 

Gruber returned home in the midst of the Great Depression and, like most of her peers, was unable to find a job, so she began writing. After many rejections, she wrote an article about Brooklyn, describing its colorful neighborhoods as a microcosm of Europe, which The New York Times bought for the Sunday paper. Then, Gruber began sending stories to the New York Herald Tribune. Impressed with her journalistic skills, The Tribune gave her press credentials, and she became the first foreign correspondent, male or female, allowed to fly through Siberia into the Soviet Arctic. She lived among the pioneers and the imprisoned, many of them Jews, in the gulag. With their acceptance felt she had found her home. An adventurous and fearless writer, she reported from Europe, especially Nazi Germany, gaining recognition for her insightful and courageous coverage. Her experiences in the 1930s shaped her understanding of the human condition and the impact of war and displacement.  

In 1941, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, after reading her book, I Went to the Soviet Arctic, sent Gruber as his field representative to make a social and economic study of Alaska in connection with opening it for GIs and homesteaders. For over eighteen months she covered the vast territory by plane, train, truck, paddle-wheel steamer, and dogsled. On Gruber’s return to Washington, Ickes appointed her his special assistant. She worked for him five years. 

Then, in 1944, while war in Europe and the Holocaust raged, under pressure, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the United States would provide temporary haven for 982 refugees from war-torn Europe. This decision led to the establishment of the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter at a former army camp in Oswego, a small town in Upstate New York, the only refugee camp of its kind in the United States during the war. Ruth Gruber’s life took a momentous turn when she was appointed as a special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, who asked Gruber to escort the refugees from Naples, Italy, to the United States aboard the U.S. Army transport ship Henry Gibbins. “You’re going to be given the rank of simulated general,” Ickes told her. “If you’re shot down and the Nazis capture you as a civilian, they can kill you as a spy. But as a general, according to the Geneva Convention, they have to give you food and shelter and keep you alive.” 

She told The New York Times that the refugees represented "a cross-section of every refugee now pouring into Italy," including Jews, Catholics, and Protestants for whom religious services were held onboard the ship. In a touching moment in Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America, her book recounting the voyage, Gruber recalls a rabbi conducting a service as the boat passed the Statue of Liberty, and her pride in telling the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust that the poem on the base was written by Emma Lazarus, an American Jew.

[Gruber’s book about the experience, Haven: The Unknown Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees, became the basis for the permanent Holocaust exhibit in the State Museum in Albany called “From Holocaust to Haven.” In 2001, the book was later adapted into a four-hour television miniseries, bringing wider attention to this little-known episode of American history.]   

Gruber formed close bonds with many of the refugees and documented their struggles and resilience. She was instrumental in helping the refugees voice their desire to remain in the United States after the war rather than face deportation back to Europe. Due in part to her advocacy and journalistic efforts, many of the Fort Ontario refugees were ultimately allowed to stay, setting a precedent for future humanitarian policies. 

Gruber’s work at Fort Ontario was just one chapter of her remarkable career. She continued to report on the plight of displaced persons and refugees throughout the world, including the harrowing story of the ship Exodus 1947, which carried Holocaust survivors to Palestine. In 1985, she helped rescue Ethiopian Jews and recorded their stories. In her long career, she wrote thirteen books and magazine and newspaper articles. 

Ruth Gruber passed away on November 17, 2016, at the age of 105, leaving behind a legacy as a fearless journalist, humanitarian advocate, and voice for the displaced. Her unwavering commitment to documenting the struggles and triumphs of refugees remains an inspiration.