Ruth Gruber was one of the most extraordinary women of her time, someone who witnessed and reported history while making some of her own. Born in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn in 1911, Gruber was an excellent student who finished college while still in her teens and earned a Ph.D. at a university in Germany when she was only 20, making her the youngest person in the world to receive the graduate degree. Gruber became a reporter and photographer for the New York Herald-Tribune, and was the first Western journalist to visit the Soviet Arctic, publishing numerous articles and a book about her experiences. During World War II, Gruber worked with the United States government and helped save the lives of a thousand Jewish refugees, arranging for them to receive asylum in America after becoming stranded in Naples. Gruber also covered Hitler's rise to power in Germany, the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, and the 1947 journey of the ship the Exodus, which led to the formation of the State of Israel. Gruber, still lucid at the age of 96, sat for a series of interviews with filmmaker Bob Richman in 2009, and Ahead of Time is a documentary in which she speaks of her life and times, with newsreel footage and Gruber's own photographs illustrating her remarkable true-life stories. Ahead of Time was honored as Best Documentary at the 2010 Berkshire International Film Festival.
