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

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Journalist Gruber, a Ph.D. at age 19, became an international correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune in 1935, launching a career that covered the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, the establishment of Israel and the first glimpse of Siberian gulags. Gruber has a charming, feminine perspective rare to the times; combined with her knack for (very) telling details, she makes a riveting storyteller. For instance, 1941 found Gruber in Alaska with troops preparing of the U.S.'s entry into WWII, and she captures their desperation expertly in a single quote from a teenaged soldier who visited her one morning: " 'Excuse me for bothering you. I'm so lonely. I only want to hear you laugh.' " Similarly, a planeful of Yemenite Jews emigrating to Israel in 1949 hides a thunderous story: "Because of years of starvation, (the Yemenites) were so tiny that the plane could hold twice as many Yemenites as Americans." Gruber also found herself a participant in history-making: at 33, she escorted 1,000 Jews from Europe to America; in a 1951 visit with refugees in Israel, Gruber admonished Prime Minister Ben Gurion for deplorable living conditions, prompting quick improvements. Complemented by a slew of Gruber's own photographs-which succinctly record the desolation and hope of the times-this life story makes for a fascinating journey.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Through words and photographs, Gruber chronicles an 80-year career as a photojournalist and correspondent. She was a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune from 1935 until 1967. Gruber recorded the rise of Hitler in Germany in the 1930s and later documented the immigration of thousands of refugees to the U.S., an account that was the subject of her well-regarded book Haven. She went on to chronicle the emigration of Jews from Europe and around the world to Israel, recording the British attack on a boat carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees to Israel, an account that was later the basis for Leon Uris' Exodus. For this stunning book, Gruber chose the best photographs of her eight-decade-long career and offers essays recounting personal observations of major events of the past, including the construction of new cities in the Siberian gulag by pioneers and prisoners spared execution by Stalin. A fascinating look at world events by an adventurous and pioneering woman journalist. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Schocken (April 24, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805242430
• ISBN-13: 978-0805242430
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #192,547 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A heroic witness , June 11, 2007

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Memoir of an Amazing Photojournalist , November 25, 2007

By	Phyllis Johnson "words at play" (Virginia) - See all my reviews

"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)

5.0 out of 5 stars GOD BLESS RUTH, April 5, 2008

By	harvo - See all my reviews

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.....