Ruth Gruber, internationally renowned foreign correspondent and award-winning author of Exodus 1947, will deliver a free public lecture entitled, "From Holocaust to Haven," at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 4 in UCSB Campbell Hall. Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, she will also sign copies of her recently reissued book, Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America (Random House, 2000).

In 1944, under the auspices of the U.S. government, Gruber was sent on a secret mission to bring 1,000 Jewish and Christian World War II refugees to sanctuary in America. Haven recounts the dramatic story of her efforts. As special assistant to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, Gruber was selected to carry out this top-secret mission despite the objections of military brass who doubted the thirty-three-year-old woman's qualifications. When Gruber met the gaunt survivors, they told her about hiding in sewers and forests, of risking their lives to save others. As she wrote down their stories, tears often wiped out the words in her notebook.

Gruber became the refugees' guardian angel during the dangerous crossing of the U-boat-haunted Atlantic, and during their eighteen-month internment at a former army camp in Oswego, New York. Lobbying Congress at the end of the war, she also helped the refugees become American citizens.

Haven follows a vivid cast of characters from their dangerous sea journey to Fort Ontario in upstate New York to the battle in Congress to allow these refugees to remain in the U.S. Haven was the subject of a CBS miniseries broadcast in February 2001 that received the prestigious Humanitas Prize and the inspiration for a play that will premiere in Los Angeles during November of 2002.

Gruber is also the author of Raquela: A Woman of Israel that won the National Jewish Book Award in 1979, the critically acclaimed Rescue: The Exodus of the Ethiopian Jews, and Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent. Both the book and movie Exodus were based on Gruber's eyewitness accounts written for the New York Herald Tribune and later published in her book, Destination Palestine: The Story of the Haganah Ship Exodus 1947. 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 has also been awarded the Yom Hashoa National Leadership Award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center for her "outstanding services rendered to the Jewish people."

The Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies are co-sponsored by UCSB Arts & Lectures, Department of Religious Studies, Hillel, and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. This event is also being cosponsored by UCSB Bookstore and Anti-Defamation League. It is put on in partnership with the ACLU Santa Barbara Chapter, Beyond Tolerance, Santa Barbara Jewish Federation, and Santa Barbara Women's Political Committee.