This page,
left to right:

Ruth Gruber por-
trays a refugee in the
miniseries "Haven'':
"Being part of the
miniseries was a very
moving experience,
but it also was fun
once I got caught up
Iwitn learning about
filming," she says.

L

I

Natasha Richardson
stars as Ruth Gruber
in "Haven." The
ilm stays true to
1Gruber's personal
sense of style. Always
impeccably dressed,
she wore a white suit
when she traveled to
Naples, similar to
the one worn by
Richardson in the
miniseries.

I

mong the 7,000 extras in the CBS mini-series Haven stands an 89-year-old woman
pleading to be brought aboard the Henry Gibbins, the ship moving almost 1,000

European Holocaust survivors away from Hitler's atrocities to refuge in the United

States.

The woman has been outfitted in a fragile black chiffon dress with buttons down the front and a skirt

that billows out a bit. Already in tatters when she tried it on, the garment rips whenever she moves, and

the costumer has to pin it up each time.

The extra has a rag around her head, mud on her face and a big red scar on her forehead, sug-

gesting that she's faced Nazi brutality.

"Take me, take me," she yells to Natasha
Richardson, who is portraying Ruth
Gruber, the young Jewish woman chosen
to represent the U.S. government while
escorting the desperate travelers across
treacherous waters in 1944.
In this scene, the words spoken by the
extra ring with deeper meaning than the
viewing audience of the made-for-television
drama, airing Feb. 11 and 14, might sus-
pect. That's because the extra is in fact
Ruth Gruber, who more than 50 years ago
aided the only group of Jewish refugees
from Hitler's Europe allowed to cross the
ocean and be admitted to a temporary
haven in America.
"Being part of the miniseries was a very
moving experience, but it also was fun once

I got caught up with learning about film-
ing," says Gruber, who appears in several
scenes and met with the Tony Award-win-
ning Richardson months before production
began to recall the particulars of the his-
toric journey. Covered in Gruber's newly re-
released book Haven (Times Books; $14),
the account was fictionalized somewhat for
the TV presentation.
The first segment of the miniseries covers
the time Gruber got her secret World War
II assignment from then Interior secretary
Harold Ickes, to whom she was a special
assistant, and follows her shipboard experi-
ences with the refugees heading from Italy
to temporary shelter at Fort Ontario, a for- ,
mer Army camp in Oswego, N.Y., on a
mission initiated by President Franklin

Anne Bancroft,
left, with Natasha
Richardson, portrays
Ruth's concerned
and outspoken
mother, who was
less than thrilled
with her daughter's
overseas assignment.
"How do I know
she'll come home
safe," Gussie Gruber
asked Secretary Ickes.
"Don';` worry, little
mother," he told her.
"We're making her
a general."

Dr. Ruth Gruber,
left, on board the
"Henry Gibbins"
and, opposite page,
today: "On the ship
I realized that from
that moment on,
my life would be
forever inextricably
bound with rescue
and survival,"
I says Gruber of the
drama she describes
las "the best-kept
!secret of World
ti War II."

I

MOTHER RUTH on page 70

2/9
2001