Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation »

Ruth Gruber was born in 1911, earned her Ph.D. at age twenty, and soon became a foreign correspondent. At twenty-three, writing for the New York Herald Tribune, she was the first journalist--man or woman--to report from the Soviet Arctic. In 1944, while she was working for Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, President Roosevelt sent Gruber on a covert mission to escort 1,000 World War II refugees in a secret convoy across the Atlantic to America. That mission resulted in her book Haven, which will be the basis of a major network television movie in 2000. Gruber has published fourteen books, including Raquela, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1978. Her Exodus photographs appeared in the 1997 Oscar-winning documentary The Long Way Home. In 1998 Gruber received a lifetime achievement award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. She lives in New York City, has two children and four grandchildren, and speaks frequently around the country.

On July 18, 1947, American journalist Ruth Gruber stood on a wharf in Haifa as the Exodus 1947 limped into harbor. The evening before, this unarmed ship, crammed with more than 4,500 Holocaust survivors, had been rammed and boarded by sailors of the British Navy to prevent her desperate human cargo from seeking refuge in Palestine. Gruber rushed to the scene and began witnessing the events as they unfolded, ultimately spending the next several months pursuing the exiles from port to port on the Mediterranean.
Gruber’s quest produced riveting dispatches and vivid photographs published in the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Post that shaped worldwide perception of the plight of the DPs and arguably influenced the U.N. to create the state of Israel. This gripping book contains Gruber’s moving images and text, plus additional reporting on the wretched camps in Europe where the refugees lived before boarding the Exodus 1947, as well as details of many passengers’ eventual fates. In this edition marking the sixtieth anniversary of the voyage, Gruber’s masterpiece remains as stirring and unforgettable as ever.