Ruth Gruber was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 30, 1911. She received a bachelor's degree from New York University, a master's degree in German at the University of Wisconsin, and a doctorate in German literature at the University of Cologne. She became a photojournalist and author who documented Joseph Stalin's gulags, life in Nazi Germany, the Nuremberg war-crimes trials, and the plight of Jewish refugees intercepted by the British on the passage of the Exodus to Palestine in 1947.
She wrote 19 books during her lifetime, mostly based on her own experiences, including Destination Palestine: The Story of the Haganah Ship Exodus 1947, I Went to the Soviet Arctic, and Witness: One of the Great Correspondents of the Twentieth Century Tells Her Story. Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America was made into a two-part CBS mini-series in 2001. She died on November 17, 2016 at the age of 105.
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