Reader recommendation: Haven
Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.
June 5, 2012
I was spellbound by journalist Ruth Gruber's Haven, an eyewitness account of her top secret humanitarian mission with the 1,000 Jewish and Christian refugees allowed by Roosevelt to enter the United States in 1944. As assistant to Dept. of the Interior's chief Harold Ickes, Gruber successfully and compassionately shepherded the refugees to the US and through their 18-month internment in Oswego, NY, all the way to American citizenship. Her unforgettable narrative of the refugees' suffering and courage through Hitler's nightmare and their adjustment to the United States permits many insights into the Holocaust and of US wartime politics.