Journalist and author Ruth Gruber is best known for her journey with the 982 refugees of the Nazi Holocaust from war-torn Europe to a temporary haven at Oswego’s Fort Ontario. Her most famous exploit links her forever to Oswego. In an article published in MS. magazine, Gruber summed up her philosophy: “To be adventurous, to be an activist, to be a rebel, to be compassionate and most of all to be a mensch.” During her 90 years, she has written fourteen books, given hundreds of talks and received many awards. Gruber’s war dispatches, collected in her book Exodus 1947: The Ship That Launched a Nation, became the basis in part for Leon Uris’s best-selling novel Exodus and the movie of the same name.

Gruber also played in a major role in the documentary “The Long Way Home” about what happened to European Jews from the fall of the Third Reich in 1945 to the formation of the state of Israel in 1948. The film won an Academy Award in 1998 for best documentary.

Gruber became a photojournalist and foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, covering Israel in the Middle East since the end of World War II. In 1948, she covered Israel’s war of independence, traveling with the Israeli Army. She then covered every exodus to Israel—from Yemen, Iraq, North Africa, Romania, the former Soviet Union and most recently Ethiopia.

In 1998, she received the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the American Society of Journalists and Authors for her role as a “pioneering journalist and author whose books chronicle the most important events of the 20th century.” She also received awards from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and in 1999 from the National Council of Jewish Women.

Gruber was born in Brooklyn, earned her journalism degree at age eighteen from New York University and her master’s degree at age nineteen from the University of Wisconsin. She received her doctorate a year later from the University of Cologne in Germany and was called the world’s youngest Ph.D. by the New York Times.

An honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from State University of New York was bestowed on Gruber at Oswego’s 140th commencement in 2001. SUNY Oswego nominated her for her life as a pioneering journalist, a model for women activists and an example for everyone who embraces freedom.