NEW PALTZ — Ruth Gruber, renowned journalist, author and foreigncorrespondent, will deliver the eighth annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture atthe State University of New York at New Paltz on Wednesday, April 17. Herlecture, “Haven: An American Rescue of Holocaust Refugees,” will begin at7:30 p.m. in Lecture Center 100.
Born in Brooklyn, Gruber earned her doctoral degree on an Americanexchange fellowship at the University of Cologne, Germany, where she becamean eyewitness to Hitler’s savagery as he rose to power. In 1944, under theauspices of the U.S. government, Gruber was sent on a secret mission tobring 1,000 World War II refugees back to safe haven in Oswego, N.Y. Herbook, “Haven,” tells the remarkable story.
Other books Gruber has written include “Raquela: A Woman of Israel”which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1979, the critically acclaimed”Rescue: The Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews,” and “Ahead of Time: My EarlyYears as a Foreign Correspondent.” Both the book and movie “Exodus” werebased on Gruber’s eyewitness accounts that she wrote for the New YorkHerald Tribune and later published in her book, “Destination Palestine: TheStory of the Haganah Ship Exodus 1947.”
Previous speakers in the Holocaust Memorial Lecture series haveincluded Robert J. Lifton on “Nazi Doctors,” Raul Hilberg on the “Politicsof the Holocaust,” and Beate Klarsfield on “Klaus Barbie and the Childrenof Izieu.”
The Holocaust Memorial Lecture is made possible by a generous gift toThe College at New Paltz Foundation Inc. from Louis and Mildred Resnick.Building upon activities and programs in Jewish Studies already supportedby the Resnick endowment, the Resnick Institute for the Study of ModernJewish Life offers educational, research, and Jewish archival programmingfor both the College and the greater community it serves. There is no admission charge to the lecture.
