RUTH GRUBER: PhotoJournalist Humanitarian Author Dies at 105

“I had two tools to fight injustice — words and images, my typewriter and my camera....I just felt that I had to fight evil, and I’ve felt like that since I was 20 years old. And I’ve never been an observer. I have to live a story to write it.”–NY Times

Photographer, journalist, author Ruth Gruber (September 30, 1911 - November 17, 2016) died at age 105. Gruber stumbled into one of the great rescue stories of the Holocaust when the U.S. government appointed her to escort nearly 1,000 Jews across U-boat infested waters to the shores of the United States. I spoke to Gruber for La Lettre on the night she received the International Center of Photography's Cornell Capa Award in 2011 at age 100.

The New York Times Obituary by Robert D. McFadden, November 17, 2016: ….Over seven decades, she was a correspondent in Europe and the Middle East and wrote 19 books, mostly based on her own experiences. Acting for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she escorted nearly 1,000 refugees from 19 Nazi-occupied nations to a safe haven in the United States on a perilous trans-Atlantic crossing in 1944. They included the only large contingent of Jews allowed into America during World War II. As with many of her exploits, the rescue became the subject of one of her books, “Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America” (1983). It was made into a two-part CBS mini-series in 2001, starring Natasha Richardson as Ms. Gruber. Read more in The New York Times…..