DOCSLIB.ORG

Finding Safe

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Finding Safe FINDING SAFE HARBOR Though she’s gained fame as an author RUTH GRUBER (4) and photographer, Ruth Gruber MA’31 found her greatest fulfillment advocating on behalf of the resi- dents of America’s only World War II refugee camp. By John Allen Neither war nor weeks aboard the crowded troop ship U.S.S. Henry Gibbins could dampen the refugees’ enthusiasm at their first sight of the Statue of Liberty. They would pass New York City by and disembark in Hoboken, New Jersey, before heading to Fort Ontario. Photos from the book: Haven by Ruth Gruber. Copyright © 2000 by Ruth Gruber. Published by arrangement with Three Rivers Press, a Division of Random House, Inc. 20 ON WISCONSIN FROM THE COLLECTION OF RUTH GRUBER Where you go, I will go ... your people shall be my people. BOOK OF RUTH 1:16 In the language of biblical symbolism, The story unfolds1 in the summer of Ruth is a daughter’s name, not a 1944, when, after having largely ignored mother’s. Her eponymous book shows the plight of refugees until then, President Ruth as the good child, so devoted to her Franklin Roosevelt declared that the U.S. mother-in-law, Naomi, that she would should bring a thousand of them across give up her homeland. When Ruth’s hus- the ocean from war-ravaged Italy. The band dies, she follows Naomi to Bethle- decision was partly humanitarian, partly hem, in search of refuge from the public relations, and partly pragmatic. poverty they face in Ruth’s native Moab. “The army was getting ready to make a To be symbolically correct, a Ruth push northward from Rome,” says Gru- Gruber aboard the Henry Gibbins: bringing should be an unfortunate, a wanderer, a ber, “and officers were afraid that refugees the refugees to Fort Ontario was, she says, “the most important assignment of my life.” refugee. Motherhood, stability, and nur- would get in the way of the tanks and turing don’t belong to her — they belong jeeps heading to the front lines.” leave their children behind enemy lines. to Naomi. That’s how the world would Roosevelt’s refugees would fall under And there was Mathilda Nitsch, a Czech be, if life paid attention to its allusions. the administrative control of the Depart- who had run an underground railroad But life, it seems, skipped the class ment of the Interior, and that’s where station helping Jews to escape. Captured on symbolism. With the sort of casual Gruber joins the tale. She was a special by the Italian secret police, she’d been disregard for literary propriety that assistant to that department’s secretary, tortured, locked in a cellar for ten days vexes English majors, one of the best Harold Ickes, who appointed her as his without heat, then shipped off to the real-life refugee stories of the last century emissary. “My mission was to help pre- concentration camp at Ferramonte. Each cast a Ruth in the role of a Naomi. pare the refugees for life in America, refugee had a horror story, and Gruber Ruth Gruber MA’31 is an author, inside the camp,” she says. “But I gave recorded them all for Ickes and, eventu- photographer, and journalist, but “the myself the mission of collecting their life ally, the American public. most important assignment of my life,” histories, their case histories. We needed Gruber’s charges had come from she says, came in 1944, when she to have a better idea of where they’d eighteen different nations, and during the became a virtual adoptive mother for come from, of their culture and what voyage, she gave them a basic course in the 982 residents of Fort Ontario, near they’d been through, if we were to help American life. She introduced some of Oswego, a small city in upstate New them properly.” them to the ship’s other passengers, a York. There, at the only refugee camp Gruber soon discovered that life in a thousand American soldiers wounded in set up in the U.S. during World War II, camp had an ominous sound to many of the bloody battles at Casino and Anzio. she helped a collection of impoverished the refugees. She joined them in Naples, And she began teaching them English Holocaust survivors adjust to life in just before they crossed the Atlantic, and phrases, working in a mix of the mun- America. as she collected their histories, she learned dane and the bizarre — the refugees “The camp was one of the best-kept the full details of the terrors they’d faced. needed to learn not only simple pleas- secrets of the war,” says Gruber, but the She met Manya Hartmayer, who had antries, but also to maintain military secret’s out now — in February 2001, been imprisoned in the concentration secrecy. “Walking around the ship,” she CBS aired a miniseries called Haven, camp at Gurs, in southern France, and says, “I could hear people reciting to based on Gruber’s memoir of the same who’d crossed the Alps on foot and hid- each other in all accents the litany of name, which describes her time among den in a convent until the American army their first words of English: ‘How do you the refugees. Television gave Gruber the came. And she met Samuel and Breindel feel? I feel fine. The name of this ship is a face of Natasha Richardson and cele- Silberman, who’d fought in the Belgian secret. We come from the North Pole.’ ” brated both her work and the camp’s underground and had been forced to Gruber came to feel a parent’s success. According to the program’s responsibility for the refugees’ welfare. tagline, “Her courage saved a thousand 1 Here’s a summation for those of you who She cried with them when one of their lives. A girl from Brooklyn defied the missed the miniseries. And there’s no shame number died; she cheered with them at Nazis, challenged the U.S. government in admitting you did — part of it aired on their first sight of the Statue of Liberty; ... and changed the world.” Valentine’s Day. Maybe you had a date. and she traveled with them to Oswego, SPRING 2002 21 where they would live behind barbed wire for a year and a half. When the war ended and Congress threatened to deport them, she lob- bied on their behalf, challenging rigid U.S. immigration policies and eventually helping to convince President Harry Truman that the refugees should be allowed to stay. In Jan- uary 1946, they were offered visas, and most of them became citizens. “Even today, I still travel all over the coun- try to meet with them,” says Gruber, who’s now ninety. “And we have the best reunions. They still Many of the refugees had been inmates of concentration camps, and some, like the men here, had no clothes other call me Mother Ruth.” than those that had been issued to them by their German and Italian jailers. Gruber says she’s delighted with the CBS’s treatment. going the experiences that would prepare variety of cultures just beyond her door. Natasha Richardson adds an element of her for that role. An important step in that “Brooklyn was like a little Europe then,” glamour to defying Nazis and challenging education came — though she wouldn’t she says. “There was a Jewish section, a the U.S. government, but the story know it at the time — when she first left German section, an Italian section, an hardly needs glamour to grab a person’s Brooklyn for the University of Wisconsin. Irish section, and the Gypsies wandered interest. If the events described in Haven through it all.” Moving from neighbor- didn’t change the world — and there are hood to neighborhood was like passing plenty of signs to suggest the world is still GRUBER WAS BORN, SHE SAYS, from nation to nation, an environment pretty rough on refugees (see sidebar, in a shtetl. However, her shtetl wasn’t that gave Gruber easy access to different “The Tampa”) — they certainly changed a tiny village in Russia or Poland, but languages. She grew up speaking not Gruber. In the pages of her memoir, she rather the Williamsburg section of just English but Yiddish, and she soon describes her journey with the refugees as Brooklyn, New York. “On Moore learned its close cousin, German, as well. a defining moment: “From this voyage Street,” she says of her birth home, “I A precocious student, she graduated on, I knew, my life would be inextricably thought the whole world was Jewish. from high school at age fourteen, and locked with Jews. I felt myself trembling The butcher, the grocer, the dressmaker, received her bachelor’s degree from in the Atlantic night, trembling not from the corsetière who made my mother’s New York University at eighteen. the wind but from the revelation.” Before corsets — everyone was Jewish.” The She fell in love with the works of then, Gruber was a minor official in the Brooklyn of Gruber’s birth in 1911 was Goethe and Schiller, and so she studied Department of the Interior; afterward, growing quickly, filling with recent German language and literature. But she she became a forceful advocate for Jew- arrivals to America. Her own parents fell in love, also, with the idea of inde- ish refugees (see sidebar, “Exodus 1947”). had both been born in Eastern Europe, pendence. In Brooklyn, she had a large Still, the miniseries hardly gave a full her father coming to America only in and supportive family, with four siblings picture of Gruber’s life.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Fort Ontario Refugee Camp, the Arrival ©2017 OSWEGO COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 135 EAST THIRD STREET OSWEGO, NY 13126
    Fort Ontario Refugee Camp, The Arrival ©2017 OSWEGO COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 135 EAST THIRD STREET OSWEGO, NY 13126 In 1944, as the war raged in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in response to the atrocities as well as to the growing refugee populations in allied occupied zones in Europe, allowed for 1000 refugees to come to America for the duration of the war. They were placed at the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, NY. This shelter would become the only refugee shelter established in America for victims of the Nazi Holocaust. The shelter was active from August 1944 - February 1946. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “...because the facilities in southern Italy for refugees have been overtaxed.” “...important that the United States indicate that it is ready to share the burden of caring for refugees during the war. Accordingly, I have decided that approximately 1,000 refugees should be immediately brought from Italy to this country, to be placed in an Emergency Refugee Shelter to be established at Fort Ontario near Oswego, New York, where under appropriate security restrictions they will remain for the duration of the war.” Source: Edward B. Marks, Token Shipment: The Story of Image courtesy of Safe Haven Museum and America’s War Refugee Shelter, Fort Ontario, Oswego, N.Y. Education Center, Oswego, NY; http:// safehavenmuseum.com This image is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties. War Department Cable Joseph Smart, The Documents: Friends of Fort Ontario Guest Refugees.
    [Show full text]
  • Ruth Gruber’S Inspiring Story
    Ruth Gruber’s inspiring story Born in Brooklyn in 1911 (where she grew to adolescence believing that everyone was Jewish), the prolific author and photo-journalist Ruth Gruber will reach her 99th birthday on Sept. 30. Her life story is currently being told in “Ahead of Time,” a documentary film that is well worth seeing. She first obtained notoriety when she became the world’s youngest Ph.D., earning her doctorate on the writings of Virginia Woolf, in Germany, on the eve of the Nazi takeover. She became a correspondent for the Herald Tribune where she again made news reporting on the Soviet Arctic in 1935. Gruber repeated a similar task in 1942, this time reporting on conditions in Alaska for the Roosevelt administration. This earned her the credibility to again work for the government in escorting a thousand Jewish refugees from Europe, to the US, where they were interned in Oswego, NY. This was one of the few concrete achievements of the Roosevelt administration in rescuing Jews from the Holocaust—an effort forced upon FDR by his Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, who had assembled evidence of the State Department’s work to block Jewish immigration and had threatened to make this public. The film makes reference to this fact. Her next milestone event was in reporting on the “Exodus” story, from Palestine, for the New York Post. This was the Haganah ship, filled to the gills with Jewish refugees, which attempted to run the British blockade of Palestine in 1947, only to be stopped and violently boarded by British sailors and marines.
    [Show full text]
  • The Future of the German-Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism
    Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Purdue University Press Books Purdue University Press Fall 12-15-2020 The Future of the German-Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism Gideon Reuveni University of Sussex Diana University Franklin University of Sussex Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks Part of the Jewish Studies Commons Recommended Citation Reuveni, Gideon, and Diana Franklin, The Future of the German-Jewish Past: Memory and the Question of Antisemitism. (2021). Purdue University Press. (Knowledge Unlatched Open Access Edition.) This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. THE FUTURE OF THE GERMAN-JEWISH PAST THE FUTURE OF THE GERMAN-JEWISH PAST Memory and the Question of Antisemitism Edited by IDEON EUVENI AND G R DIANA FRANKLIN PURDUE UNIVERSITY PRESS | WEST LAFAYETTE, INDIANA Copyright 2021 by Purdue University. Printed in the United States of America. Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file at the Library of Congress. Paperback ISBN: 978-1-55753-711-9 An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of librar- ies working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-1-61249-703-7. Cover artwork: Painting by Arnold Daghani from What a Nice World, vol. 1, 185. The work is held in the University of Sussex Special Collections at The Keep, Arnold Daghani Collection, SxMs113/2/90.
    [Show full text]
  • Family Exhibition Guide and Activity
    AMERICANS AND THE HOLOCAUST was made possible by the generous support of lead sponsor Jeannie & Jonathan Lavine. Additional major funding was provided by the Bildners—Joan & Allen z”l, Elisa Spungen & Rob, Nancy & Jim; and Jane and Daniel Och. AMERICANS The Museum’s exhibitions are also supported by the Lester Robbins and Sheila Johnson Robbins Traveling AND THE HOLOCAUST and Special Exhibitions Fund, established in 1990. FAMILY EXHIBITION GUIDE AND ACTIVITIES ushmm.org/americans-ala #USHMM ushmm.org/connect 100 Raoul Wallenberg Pl SW, Washington, DC 20024 Welcome to the STORY 4: USE YOUR VOICE Who? Ruth Gruber AMERICANS What? Journalist When? 1944 AND THE HOLOCAUST exhibition. Where? Oswego, New York Today you will step back in history to learn about American Ruth Gruber was a journalist and responses to the Nazi threat in the 1930s and 1940s. Use this photographer who worked for the US guide to focus on the history of four Americans who lived government. In 1944, she accompanied during this time. How did they respond to the persecution of 1,000 mostly Jewish refugees on their Jews? What actions did they take? journey to an American refugee camp Photo courtesy of: Ruth Gruber Archives, in Oswego, New York. Ruth joined the Before you get started, review these key facts lent by David Michaels and Celia Michaels refugees on the ship from Europe and about Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. recorded their experiences in order to write articles about them. The refugees remained at Fort Ontario Who were the Nazis? in Oswego for 18 months.
    [Show full text]
  • Like Museums, Videogames Aren't Neutral
    Old Dominion University ODU Digital Commons Institute for the Humanities Theses Institute for the Humanities Summer 2019 Harbored: Like Museums, Videogames Aren't Neutral Stephanie Hawthorne Old Dominion University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/humanities_etds Part of the European History Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Museum Studies Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Hawthorne, Stephanie. "Harbored: Like Museums, Videogames Aren't Neutral" (2019). Master of Arts (MA), thesis, Humanities, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/176r-k992 https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/humanities_etds/21 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for the Humanities at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Institute for the Humanities Theses by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HARBORED: LIKE MUSEUMS, VIDEOGAMES AREN’T NEUTRAL by Stephanie Hawthorne B.A. May 2013, Old Dominion University A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Old Dominion University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS HUMANITIES OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY August 2019 Approved by: Kevin Moberly (Chair) Annette Finley-Croswhite (Member) Amy K. Milligan (Member) ABSTRACT HARBORED: LIKE MUSEUMS, VIDEOGAMES AREN’T NEUTRAL Stephanie Hawthorne Old Dominion University, 2019 Director: Dr. Kevin Moberly There are three primary components to be reviewed: (1) an essay (2) a videogame design document and (3) a prototype. The following essay is comprised of: (1) an analysis of scholarship and contemporary works regarding videogames and museums that demonstrate the theory and method behind this project, (2) research regarding an historic maritime event that will serve as the subject matter for the proposed videogame, and (3) a conclusion that summarizes the game design.
    [Show full text]
  • Anti-Semitism and American Refugee Immigration Policy During the Holocaust: a Reassessment
    Anti-Semitism and American Refugee Immigration Policy during the Holocaust: A reassessment Sikeli Neil Ratu A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of B.A. (Hons) in History. University of Sydney October 2006 Contents Illustrations 1 Archival abbreviations 2 INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER ONE: Nativism on Capitol Hill 6 CHAPTER TWO: Fear and Paranoia in Foggy Bottom 32 CHAPTER THREE: Refugees in the Press 55 CONCLUSION 77 Appendix 79 Bibliography 91 1 ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: To the Conscience of America. 81 Figure 2: Action not pity can save millions now! 82 Figure 3: For sale to Humanity, 70,000 Jews. 83 Figure 4: What is the shocking truth about saving the lives of the European Jews? 84 Figure 5: To 5,000,000 Jews in the Nazi Death-Trap Bermuda was a ‘Cruel Mockery’. 85 Figure 6: They are driven the death daily. 86 Figure 7: Time Races Death. 87 Figure 8: The Conscience of America Speaks! 88 Figure 9: 25 Square miles or 2,000,000 lives. 89 Figure 10: Raise your voice to save millions from Nazi Slaughter! 90 Table 1: Quota–Immigration Numbers: January–June 1941 v. July–December 1941. 53 Table 2: Jewish organisations’ advertisements: by size and publication. 79 Table 3: Jewish organisations’ advertisements: by size and commissioning organisation. 82 2 ARCHIVAL ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES AFSC Archives of the American Friends’ Service Committee FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library NA United States National Archives 3 Introduction In the 1930s and 1940s the United States was confronted with a ‘refugee question’— whether or not to permit Jewish refugee immigration and on what terms—that forced the branches of government and the public to consider carefully their attitudes to immigration and the role America ought to play in humanitarian geo-politics.
    [Show full text]
  • Culture and Conflict in Israel
    University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 6-1956 Culture and conflict in Israel. Hannah Scoggin University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Scoggin, Hannah, "Culture and conflict in Israel." (1956). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1288. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/1288 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ~ULTURE AND CONFLICT IN ISRAEL A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of ,the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts At the University of Louisville Department of Sociology by Mrs. Hannah \ScogginI' June, 1956 NAME OF STUDENT: Mrs. Hannah Scoggin TITLE OF THESIS: CULTURE AND CONFLICT IN ISRAEL APPROVED BY READING COMMITTEE COMPOSED OF THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS: NAME OF DIRECTOR: Robert I. Kutak DATE: _________________________ PREFACE Times Square went mad with noise and excitement, and a small freighter slipped from its Brooklyn berth into the drama of the night. It was December 31, 1949--midnight-­ January 1, 1950; and I was on my way to the world in general and Israel and the Near East in particular. To say the words Near East, to hear them spoken, to read the combination of Latin letters, even to think them fleetingly can conjure up for me a haze of incense-tinged dreams in which I see exotic sights, breathe pungent odours, and hear mysterious sounds.
    [Show full text]
  • Emergency Refugee Shelter at Fort Ontario (Safe Haven)
    Emergency Refugee Shelter at Fort Ontario: Jewish Haven at Oswego, NY SUNY Oswego, Penfield Library – Safe Haven site | Oral Histories | Video Recordings https://www.oswego.edu/library/safe-haven "The refugee is like a plant without soil or water." -Moses Ibn Ezra, Shirat Yisreal In August of 1944, close to one thousand refugees from war torn Europe were placed in an internment camp at Fort Ontario to await the outcome of the Second World War. The majority of these refugees were Jewish and had recently been liberated from the persecutions of Nazism in central Europe. Their stay in Oswego was to become an emotional event for the community of Oswego and a political conundrum for the nation. It was not until January of 1946 that the gates of the War Refugee Center were opened and the refugees allowed to become truly free. In an effort to better understand the plight of the refugees and the mindset of this tragic era, Penfield Library has compiled this study guide and bibliography to assist those interested in the subject. In addition, Safe Haven, Inc., formed in 1989, is dedicated to preserving the refugee’s stories and documenting how life in Oswego contributed to their experiences and new found freedom. Their Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum houses valuable resources and artifacts. Some historical material is available through their website, http://www.safehavenmuseum.com. Call numbers, below, refer to locations for titles in collection of Penfield Library, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY. Emergency Refugee Shelter at Fort Ontario Page 1 of 10 Special Collections, Penfield Library, SUNY Oswego Last modified, May 2016 https://www.oswego.edu/library/safe-haven Published Books, Monographs and Chapters of Interest Committee for the Study of Recent Immigration from Europe.
    [Show full text]
  • USHMM Finding
    https://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Interview with Jack Bass December 15, 2014 RG-50.106*0236 https://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection PREFACE The following interview is part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's collection of oral testimonies. Rights to the interview are held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The reader should bear in mind that this is a verbatim transcript of spoken, rather than written prose. This transcript has been neither checked for spelling nor verified for accuracy, and therefore, it is possible that there are errors. As a result, nothing should be quoted or used from this transcript without first checking it against the taped interview. https://collections.ushmm.org Contact [email protected] for further information about this collection JACK BASS December 15, 2014 Gail Schwartz: This is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum volunteer collection interview with Jack Bass. It is being conducted by Gail Schwartz on December 15th, 2014. And is taking place over the telephone in Minneapolis, Minnesota and at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This is track number one. What is your full name? Jack Bass: Joachim, J-O-A-C-H-I-M, middle initial H like in Harry. Last name is Bass like a fish, B-A-S-S. Q: What is the H stand for? A: The H stands for Henri, or Henry. Q: When where you born? A: November first 1932. Q: In the Gruber book it said November 11th.
    [Show full text]
  • OH 277 ORAL HISTORY, FORT ONTARIO REFUGEE PROJECT 40TH REUNION CELEBRATION, AUGUST 1984 [Very Long Lead-In, Possibly Five Minute
    OH 277 MS 131 OH 277 ORAL HISTORY, FORT ONTARIO REFUGEE PROJECT 40 TH REUNION CELEBRATION, AUGUST 1984 [Very long lead-in, possibly five minutes, of chatter, singing, some high-pitched whine.] JOSEPH PAPP: Welcome ladies and gentlemen. [Applause] I was just talking to Rabbi Moshevitz who’s behind me, before we came in. We’re rehearsing the play The Golem . I said, “We had a big discussion last night. How do you pronounce this: is it “Rebbay” or Rebbee? So he shook his head and said, “Well, ‘Rebbay is all right; Rebbee is all right”. It’s a very Jewish reaction. We decided on Rebbbee, anyway. [Some laughter.] It’s very appropriate that we’re in this building. It’s very appropriate that Governor Cuomo is with us today [Applause] because there’s a series of events that are fitting. It’s fitting that also we’re presenting a play tonight, a great Jewish play by a great Jewish poet, by [Hey?] Leivick: The Golem [some audience comments] Lyvick? I think we have proponents on both sides. My father said Layvick. What can I do? We have the Litvak’s here, and etc. In any event, this building we’re in, as you may know, is the HIAS [Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society] building. It was the building that housed thousands and thousands of Jewish refugees from all over the world, particularly from Eastern Europe. When we first came here, we came into a dark, old, deserted place that hadn’t been used in two or three years. We came into rooms that had [talisman?] on the floor; there were prayer book siddurs everywhere.
    [Show full text]
  • Ahead of Time Ruth Gruber Didn’T Just Report the News…She Made It! a Film by Bob Richman Produced by Zeva Oelbaum
    “ You could not invent Ruth Gruber…not even in a movie.” Richard Holbrooke Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan OFFICIAL SELECTION Toronto International Film Festival WINNER BEST DOCUMENTARY Berkshires International Film Festival OFFICIAL SELECTION Full Frame Documentary Film Festival WINNER BEST DOCUMENTARY Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival WINNER BEST DOCUMENTARY Miami Jewish Film Festival Ahead of Time Ruth Gruber didn’t just report the news…she made it! A Film by Bob Richman Produced by Zeva Oelbaum EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS PATTI KENNER, DORIS SCHECHTER, DENISE BENMOSCHE, HENRY JARECKI MD ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE PRODUCERS JUDY ALEY, LEWANNE JONES PRODUCTION SOUND EDWARD O’CONNOR MOTION GRAPHICS BRIAN OAKES PRODUCTION DESIGNER ZEVA OELBAUM MUSIC BY TED REICHMAN ADDITIONAL MUSIC REUBEN CHESS & DAVID DAWDA EDITED BY SABINE KRAYENBÜHL PRODUCED BY ZEVA OELBAUM DIRECTED AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY BOB RICHMAN USA, 2009, COLOR, 73 MINUTES Ahead of Time AHEADOFTIME THEMOVIE .COM REELINHERITANCE FILMS .COM On October 19, 2010, The Norman Mailer Center will award 99 year-old Ruth Gruber their Distinguished Humanitarian and Journalism Prize A tiny sampling of her other awards include: National Jewish Book Awards Lifetime Achievement Award 2010 Overseas Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award 2009 National Coalition Against Censorship Lifetime Achievement Award 2008 Hebrew Union College Honorary Doctorate University of Wisconsin Honorary Doctorate Institute of International Education Ruth Gruber Chair for the Scholar Rescue Fund Ahead of Time AHEADOFTIME THEMOVIE .COM REELINHERITANCE FILMS .COM Film Synopses SHOrt SYNOPSIS With her love of adventure and fearlessness, Ruth Gruber defied tradition from the moment she became the world’s youngest PhD at the age of 20 in 1931.
    [Show full text]
  • Years of Rescue
    The British hurried them down from the Exodus, sprayed them with DDT and then loaded them aboard three 40 "hospital" ships bound for Cyprus. I flew to Cyprus to wait for them. You had to smell Cyprus to believe it. There was no water and no privacy. Yet, in the first year, 500 babies had been born and Years of 800 marriages had taken place. After a few days, we learned that even Cyprus was too good for the Jews Cyprus 1947 of the Exodus. Herded into the three Rescue "hospital" ships, they had been taken to I flew down to Aden to cover "The Port de Bouc in southern France, the Magic Carpet Operation." From there, I by Ruth Gruber port from which they had sailed to flew to Israel with 140 Yemenite Jews. Palestine. I flew to Marseilles and Some of the women weighed only 70 In the summer of 1947, an American drove to Port de Bouc where I dis• pounds. riverboat renamed Exodus 1947 covered the ugly truth — the "hospital" "Operation Babylon" followed in limped into Haifa harbor Forty-five ships were prison ships. 1950. Again I covered the story of the hundred Jews who had sui-vived the Each evening the people of the incredible aiiJift of 120,000 Jews out of gas chambers were aboard, defying the Exodus made a circle in the crowded Arab Iraq. Then came several hundred British to enter Palestine. prison cages, a Parliament of Displaced thousand Jews from North Africa. I I was in Jerusalem covering the Persons, where they told the children spent my honeymoon trekking through meetings of the United Nations Special the meaning of the real Exodus.
    [Show full text]