Customer Reviews

Witness: One of the Great Correspondents of the Twentieth Century Tells Her Story (Schocken paperbacks on Judaica)

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I have just listened to an interview with Ruth Gruber with Sara Ivry on the 'Nextbook' site. Gruber is ninety- five years old. Her voice is weak but her mind is absolutely clear. In the interview she tells about how she got her start in journalism with the International Herald Tribune, and how on assignment with it she witnessed the rise of the Nazis in Germany. She also is asked about the heroic endeavor in which she helped bring one - thousand orphans to America. She also tells of her witnessing the brutality of the British in boarding in waters outside Haifa the ship 'Exodus' that was packed with Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.
Gruber in her thirty years as a correspondent traveled wide and far. The one - hundred ninety pictures in this book are in themselves a stunning testimony to her dedication in witnessing the vagaries of the human drama.
However what comes through most strongly is those chapters of her life in which Gruber was not simply witness but active rescuer of others. When asked which photograph made the strongest impression on her. She said it is one from the Shoah in which there are three small children, two brothers protecting their small sister. One brother is smiling happily
but the sister who is the youngest of the children has the saddest eyes Gruber has ever seen. She feels the child looking out from those eyes towards the parents who are not there and who will never be seen again.

"Witness"
By Ruth Gruber
Review by Phyllis Johnson
Landing assignments her male colleagues hadn't, flying to the Soviet Arctic and then to Europe, seeing an exodus from a country ravaged during the Holocaust, Ruth Gruber was quite a photojournalist. She writes her memoir in "Witness" and serves as an inspiration to anyone spending his or her life tracking down a story, particularly one that may change someone's life for the better.
A life full of adventure and passion for human justice is evident in her 257 page book published by Schocken Books. Sometimes smuggling a notebook in her bra, she ran the gamut from studying Eskimos in Alaska to talking to exiled prisoners in Soviet Gulag.
Photos, black and white images, showing the Soviet Arctic and Alaska documented images of rustic living and reflections of the soul. She wrote of seeing the Aleuts in harm's way of the Japanese, then photographed their exodus. Her photos also show the exodus from the devastation caused by Hitler during the Holocaust in World War II..
A master at capturing intense emotion found in hardships, she knew how to get down in the trenches to get the best possible photos to tell a story. She went behind the scenes, sometimes dubbed as a simulated general to avoid a worse fate if captured as a spy.
Later, she got stories from the refugees onboard an army transport and then pulled into the NY Harbor on August 3, 1944- the same day Anne Frank's family was betrayed. Ruth was accompanying to the United States 1,000 refugees invited by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt while day and night Adolph Eichmann was rushing cattle trains carrying 750,00 Jews into the death camps at Auschwitz.
She records her travels to Europe, the Holy Land and the Arab World, and how she came to be witness to the Nuremberg Trials. Seeing the plight of the Jews trying to come home to Palestine, she interviewed both Arabs and Jews, and followed the journey of Iraqi Jews to Israel. Seeing compassion in a lawyer and social activist named Phil, she was moved to marry him.
Ruth Gruber's account of the ongoing struggle for those seeking justice and fair treatment in life is both vivid and poignant in her book, "Witness."

Review by Phyllis Johnson, author of "Being Frank with Anne" -poetic interpretation of Anne Frank's diary. (Community Press- end Nov 2007 release)

A ground-breaking photojournalist, Ruth Gruber did the work that many considered only men could handle; traveling about the world, writing and documenting with her exceptional photography skills stories that needed to be told.

I was fascinated and impressed by Gruber's tenaciousness as well as her courage in going to those bleak, wild places to find compelling stories. Her contacts in the government for sure helped, but it was Gruber's own legwork that really got those jobs done.

One of the most poignant aspects of her career was seeing how Jews who had survived the Holocaust were treated; it was like being back in internment as they tried to get to Israel, and she did well to document their plight.

In sum, a great lady, who did it all magnificently.

I never heard of Ruth Gruber before, after reading her adventures Hollywood should make a movie of her life, not for theatres, but HBO, or Showtime. Theatrically it would be a financial flop. But for cable a success.....

I bought WITNESS because I was familiar with some of Ruth Gruber's photographs -- most notably that of the British Union Jack with a swastika, onboard the ship Exodus. I wanted to see more of Ms. Gruber's photos, and I was not disappointed. But I was just as taken in by her narrative of her experiences as a witness to history. Most interesting and revealing are her stories of the mistreatment -- primarily by Great Britain, but also by other European nations -- of Holocaust survivors. Her eye-witness account of this tragedy should be required reading for students of twentieth-century history. The same can be said of the author's first-hand experience with the birth of the nation of Israel. As Richard Holbrooke writes in his Foreword, Ruth Gruber should be considered a national treasure. Now that I've discovered her, I am anxious to read her other books.
[...]

Ruth Gruber has witnessed so many of the great events of the 20th century. Lucky for us, she can write and photograph with real skill. You will not be disappointed with this book.

Book "Witness: One of the Great Correspondents of the Twentiety Century Tells Her Story", arrived quickly and in great shape. I'm excited to read it. Thank you very much.

I really don't understand all these glowing reviews. The title should have given me a hint - someone calling herself as the "Correspondents of the Twentieth Century" on th title of her autobiography is narcissistic. There is little value in a memoir exhibiting self-obsession without self-awareness and we see very little self awareness in this book.

All the photos are obviously very poorly reproduced, as if they had been made on a black and white copier. She may be a great photographer, but needs to pick up a better publisher with printing facilities which could do justice to a photo-journalism book.

the book is poorly written.