Collected Memoirs: Ahead of Time, Haven, and Inside of Time

0/5 ( ratings)

Three poignant and powerful memoirs from the award-winning journalist, human rights advocate, and “fearless chronicler of the Jewish struggle” .

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for her biography of the pioneering Israeli nurse, Raquela Prywes, Ruth Gruber lived an extraordinary life as a foreign correspondent, photographer, humanitarian, and author. This collection is comprised of three of her most gripping memoirs, covering many of the most significant historical events in the first half of the twentieth century.

Ahead of Time: At the tender age of eighty, the trailblazing journalist looked back on her remarkable first twenty-five years: growing up in a Brooklyn shtetl; entering New York University at fifteen; becoming the world’s youngest person to earn a PhD at nineteen in Cologne, Germany; being exposed to Hitler’s rise to power; and becoming the first American to travel to Siberia at the age of twenty-four, reporting on Gulag conditions for the New York Herald Tribune, in this “beautifully crafted” memoir .

“Ruth Gruber’s singular autobiography is both informative and poignant. Read it and your own memory will be enriched.” —Elie Wiesel

Haven: In 1943, nearly one thousand European Jewish refugees were chosen by President Roosevelt to receive asylum in the United States. Working for the secretary of the interior, Gruber volunteered to shepherd them on their secret route across the Atlantic from Italy. She recorded the refugees’ dangerous passage, along with the aftermath of their arrival, which involved a fight to stay in the US after the war ended. The “remarkable story” was made into a TV miniseries starring Natasha Richardson as Gruber .

“[A] touching story . . . [Ruth Gruber] has put us into the full picture and humanized it.” —The New York Times

Inside of Time: Unstoppable at ninety-one, Gruber, “with clarity, insight and humor,” revisited the years 1941 to 1952, recounting her eighteen months spent surveying Alaska on behalf of the US government, her role assisting Holocaust refugees’ emigration from war-torn Europe to Israel, and her relationships with some of the most important figures of the era, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Golda Meir .

“Gruber bore witness, spoke bluntly, galvanized public opinion, inspired people to action.” —Blanche Wiesen Cook, Los Angeles Times