From the Los Angeles Times: L&S alum Ruth Gruber dies

The journalist and author brought 1,000 Jewish refugees to U.S. during World War II​. She received her Masters Degree in German from UW-Madison in 1931.

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Ruth Gruber in Alaska in 1941, with her Leica camera. She documented Stalin’s gulags and life in Nazi Germany. (Image from Reel Inheritance Films)

When Ruth Gruber saw a report during World War II that 1,000 Jewish refugees were being brought to the United States, she rushed straight to her job with the Secretary of the Interior.

"I got rid of my breakfast and rushed to the office and said, 'I have to see the secretary.' I told him, 'Somebody has to go over and hold their hands; they're going to be terrified,'" Gruber said in a 2010 interview in the Sunday Telegraph of London.

That somebody turned out to be her, and as she accompanied the refugees to the U.S., she interviewed them, which became the basis of Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America, one of her many books but only one part of Gruber's long, trailblazing life. 

Read more in The Los Angeles Times.