Ruth Gruber > Quotes

“But Palestine was derived from the name “Philistine,” the people who were constantly at war with the ancient Israelites.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“To let the famous brain surgeon into Palestine would mean helping the Jews. The British would sooner throw him in jail.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“I have a theory,” Gruber said, “that even though we’re born Jews, there is a moment in our lives when we become Jews. On that ship, I became a Jew.”
― Ruth Gruber

“Tragically, most of the Jews of Italy have been deported or massacred.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Hatikvah—“Song of Hope.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“German scientists, many of them former Nazis, were building rockets outside Cairo that could penetrate Israel within minutes.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Looking down, the Israeli pilots could tell their troops from the Egyptians’ when they saw ice-cream trucks, hot-dog vans, and laundry wagons navigating the desert.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Raquela stood at her side. “Your baby was stillborn. But you’re all right.” The mother screamed, “Even this they deny me! They take away my land. My freedom. Now my baby. Let me die. I want to die.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Could a child who had never been inside a house, who had never seen a bathtub, or a flush toilet, who had long forgotten what his parents looked like before they were shot or burned, ever be normal?”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“If the umbilical cord prolapsed—if it came out first—then the head of the baby could press down on the remainder of the cord and stop the flow of blood and oxygen.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“I think it was beshert—destined—that you become a nurse.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“You’ve got to stay alive even if it kills you.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Meanwhile, the mufti and his followers sat back, watching the war between Britain and the Jews with satisfaction.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Now the British were adding a new chapter in Athlit’s history: a detention camp for the survivors of the fire in Europe.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“You’ve never known what it is to live in the diaspora, in a country like Poland where you’re hated for one crime—being a Jew.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“The courage, the will, the guts, to fight the British, even if they end up here, like you, in Cyprus. I don’t know any other place in the world where this is happening.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Time had no meaning, save that it was running out.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“I was born in Poland. In Lodz. I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. But a Jew couldn’t study medicine in Poland.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Eritrea, on the east coast of Africa, near Ethiopia, had been used by the British during the war to imprison members of the Irgun. They had called it Devil’s Island.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“After the liberation, when the American Army freed me—I was working in a Nazi slave-labor camp—I went back to our home in Brno. I looked for my family. But they were all dead. Then I looked for the families of my friends. Judith, dear, it grieves me to tell you that your family, too, were all exterminated.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Of all the Arabs who encircled Israel, the Syrians were the most vicious.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Beware of Mrs. Meir. She is a formidable person.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Why should one expect that a woman great in intellect should not love greatly, too?”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Remembering his own feelings when he had lost his eye on a mission for the British, Dayan stopped at their bedside to cheer them up. “Boys,” he said, “for all that’s worth seeing in this wretched world, one eye is enough.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“This too was hospital practice. To have congratulated her before the afterbirth was out and whole might bring bad luck.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“Does every young woman, she wondered, discover herself through the eyes of the men who love her?”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel

“You know a man,” Papa had always said, “by his anger.”
― Ruth Gruber, Raquela: A Woman of Israel