Nothing Could Stop Her
The Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber
In Nothing Could Stop Her, Rona Arato tells the remarkable life story of trailblazing Jewish American journalist Ruth Gruber.
Born in Brooklyn in 1911 to a Jewish family from Russia, Gruber was unstoppable from the start. Intelligent and quick to learn, she graduated high school at fifteen and hitchhiked to Wisconsin to pursue a university degree in German. In Wisconsin, she experienced antisemitism for the first, but not the last, time.
Confronting antisemitism, breaking down barriers, and telling the stories of the Jewish people during the turbulence of the twentieth century became Ruth Gruber’s life calling. After pursuing a doctorate at a German university on the cusp of the Nazis’ coming into power, Gruber participated in bringing one thousand Holocaust survivors to the United States from Italy, helping them get acclimated to their new home at the only refugee camp on American soil during World War II, Fort Ontario at Oswego in upstate New York. From there, Ruth went on to break the story of the refugee ship Exodus to the world. She covered Israel’s war of independence as a journalist and participated in the rescue operation Magic Carpet that brought the Jews of Yemen to Israel. She traveled to Ethiopia and wrote books about the Ethiopian Jews. Active to the end, Gruber lived to the age of 105.
Written for a younger audience, Nothing Could Stop Her covers Ruth’s early life until the camp at Oswego and breaks down difficult topics including antisemitism, genocide, and war in an easy-to-understand, matter-of-fact way. The pages are colorful and the illustrations by Isabel Muñoz are vibrant, adding further dynamism to an already exciting life story.
Nothing Could Stop Her is an inspirational biography, revealing the remarkable life of unstoppable Ruth Gruber.
Reviewed by
Erika Harlitz Kern
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
