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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/19348/full/19348/writer-at-age-91-shares-her-front-row-seat-to-history/ <br /><br /> <b>Writer, at age 91, shares her front-row seat to history</b> <br /> Friday, February 21, 2003 | by dan pine <br /><br /><p>Some people make history. Some report history. Not many do both, but journalist-author Ruth Gruber is among that exclusive club.<br /><br /> She may be 91, but Gruber spends little time staring out the window of her Manhattan apartment, watching snow fall on Central Park.<br /><br /> Instead, she's just published her 16th book, a memoir titled "Inside of Time," and is out on a book tour that included stops last week at Oakland's Temple Sinai and San Francisco's Congregation Beth Israel-Judea (both events sponsored by the American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem).<br /><br /> It's all in a day's work for the intrepid nonagenarian, a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn with a front-row seat to history.<br /><br /> Not many people can lay claim to a resume like Gruber's. She saw Hitler address a 1932 Nazi rally. She spearheaded a rescue mission of 1,000 Jewish World War II refugees. She reported from the front lines during the tumultuous birth of the state of Israel.<br /><br /> And she counted among her friends former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Israeli Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, in whose Tel Aviv apartment the two women would kibitz as much about their kids as the Middle East conflict.<br /><br /> All this and more Gruber covers in her book, which spans roughly 1941 to 1952 -- her years as a government representative in Alaska and as a foreign correspondent covering World War II and the early years of the state of Israel.<br /><br /> Though decades have passed since those events, writing the book turned out to be easier than she thought.<br /><br /> "It just flowed out of me," says the razor-sharp Gruber. "It's as if it all happened yesterday."<br /><br /> Armed with 300 of her original reporter's notebooks and a team of graduate students to assist her, Gruber went to work retelling the past.<br /><br /> The book begins with an 18-month sojourn in Alaska, under the tutelage of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes. While there, she fell in love with the land and its people.<br /><br /> "It's a place of great beauty and promise," says Gruber. "I loved the serenity of the Eskimos, from whom I learned to live inside of time." That concept became the title of her new book.<br /><br /> Gruber doesn't take kindly to the idea of drilling in the Alaskan wilderness. "There isn't enough oil up there for more than a week," she says angrily. "It's unthinkable that we would ruin the Arctic, when we should be exploring wind and solar power."<br /><br /> Being outspoken is not new to Gruber. Born in 1911 in Brooklyn and raised in an Orthodox home, she grew up with a solid Jewish identity. A brilliant student, she earned a doctorate from the University of Cologne at age 20, the youngest woman ever to have achieved such a milestone.<br /><br /> While living with a Jewish family in Germany, Gruber grew curious to see what this "nut" Hitler was all about. Though her hosts begged her to stay home, she went to see the future Nazi dictator address a torch-lit rally.<br /><br /> "I'll never forget the brownshirts," she says, "walking around in their boots, while Hitler spoke hatred to them in that voice that seemed to come from his bowels."<br /><br /> Once back in the United States, she became a reporter and photojournalist. After her stint in Alaska, she covered World War II for the New York Post and the New York Herald Tribune.<br /><br /> Watching the Holocaust unfold stirred new passions in Gruber's heart. "I became determined to fight injustice," she says. "My life from then on would be inextricably bound up with rescue, mostly of Jews."<br /><br /> Gruber, who had never before given much thought to a Jewish state, had now become an ardent Zionist.<br /><br /> As the war ended, she personally shepherded 1,000 Holocaust refugees from Germany to an upstate New York Army outpost, an event known as the Oswego Exodus.<br /><br /> After World War II, she plunged back into action, reporting from Europe and the Middle East on the emerging state of Israel. "Being a woman was no obstacle," she notes. "In fact it was useful; people trusted me and I made friends easily."<br /><br /> Ostensibly an independent reporter, Gruber never shied away from putting in her two cents. "I don't believe in objectivity," she says, "but in being fair and honest. When Jews poured into Israel after 1948, the army put them in tents, which was terrible."<br /><br /> Seeing this, Gruber met with Ben-Gurion. Recalls Gruber, "I said to him, 'You have no right to do this to people who had been in death camps.' He asked me to write a report, which he sent to the Cabinet. Then I wrote it up for the Herald Tribune."<br /><br /> Within days, the new immigrants were relocated to decent housing.<br /><br /> Living in the same Central Park West apartment she's had since 1951, Gruber is proud of her work, but she insists she isn't finished yet. "My philosophy has always been to dream, dream, dream, and let no obstacles stop you."</p>

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