Justice

Ruth Gruber: Words and Images to Fight Injustice

Art is a tool. It is a tool that can teach and engage people in ways that we thought unreachable. A tool that can reach not only our minds but our hearts in a way that truly makes us empathize and understand. Ruth Gruber was a pioneer not only of women but of visual and literary culture. She was the youngest woman in the 1930's to receive her PhD and with her knowledge took on the life of a journalist. Using the tools that were given to her she witnessed, participated and documented communism and fascism.  What were her tools? Her camera and her pen.  Through her pictures and her writing she was able to extend the experience of Jewish refugees whose everyday life was shaped by the consequences of radical injustice. She did not take pictures so that they could hang in museums, or because they would make her money. She took pictures and wrote stories in attempt to expose the world to the incredible hardships that her Jewish community was experiencing. She photographed and wrote to confront and change social degradation. In the short film, "I am Ruth Gruber" it ends with her sharing the reality of her photographs. The reality that they tell a story not only important to the Jews, or her. But to the entire world.

Linda Stein speaks of Gruber in her talk "Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females"(H2F2). In it, she identifies that Gruber was not only a pioneer but she was an Upstander. Stein describes what an upstander means in context to the 4 B's.

• Bully
• Bullied
• Bystander
• Brave Upstander

Stein creates quilts, sculpture and workshops that aim to address,"...issues of racism, sexism, ableism, classism and homophobia, as seen through the lens of bullying" In H2F2 she chose to focus on women that showed the world that they could be brave no matter how dangerous the consequences might be. Ruth Gruber had to face a variety of her own bullies as she worked. She attended Nazi rallies, secretly escorted Jews to America, and lobbied against Congress and FDR.  In her interview she tells the story of her interaction with a British officer who tried to take her camera and film away from her as she was documenting a prison camp. She refused to be bullied and chose to be a Brave Upstander. She walked away from him with all of her belongings and one of the strongest images of her career. 

Jewish refugees, having been forced off Exodus 1947 in Haifa, Palestine, wait aboard the British prison ship Runnymede Parkon Aug. 22, 1947. In protest, the prisoners painted a swastika on top of the Union Jack.

Ruth Gruber/International Center of Photography
National Public Radio calls Ruth Gruber "A Woman of Photos and Firsts". Coming from a writer that was much younger than the then 100 year old Gruber, it is interesting to read what her accomplishments became. From Gruber's perspective she was just helping people survive and rescue the people that she could. From her perspective she had to do this because she herself was a Jew. She had a connection to the people and the experiences that she saw going on around her and helped the only way that she could. She used what she had at her disposal, images and words. From NPR's perspective, she became not only a hero for Jewish refugees but she became a hero for women. 
This picture was feature among a photograph that sparked another link of injustice to injustice in my mind. To the left is the picture that inspired me. Looking at this photograph I felt suffocated. You see people huddled next to each other, legs drawn close to their chests. There are so many people in one place that the camera can not even reach the end of them. Perhaps it was because they were on a ship that had come close to destruction but in my mind I immediately thought of a slave ship. I remembered reading a book series when I was in elementary school about a young girl who was a passenger on a ship all by her self for the very first time. It detailed the smells, sickness and hardship that she alone went through. This was an entire series of books called "Dear America". The books were unique to me as a child because they were written like journals. Reading the passages wasn't just me listening to a story, but it felt like I was being given an intimate look into the emotions that went along with the stories. I can not even begin to imagine what it was like as a slave who went through the same journey with no room to walk around them. As it has been some time since I have had a history class, I did some research and came upon a blog called DataViz by Michael Sandberg. In one of his blog entries he talks about "The Slave Ship Chart that Kindled the Abolitionist Movement". This chart  was created by the Quaker printer, James Phillips. He put the reality of slaves being transported from place to place into perspective for those that did not understand. This chart was used as a tool for those that were working towards abolishing slavery. Just like Ruth Gruber had to use her camera and words to fight the injustice of the Jews, this image was used to fight for the rights of slaves. Sandberg says, "In the years that followed, the Brookes slave ship drawing was republished in broadsheets, and as a poster, all over Britain, France, and the United States, and came to symbolize everything inhumane about the slave trade."

It was with this image that I came to the realization of how images have been used for centuries to support and destroy political agendas. While in school I was always prompted to look at it from one perspective. I criticized images as art using art history as my knowledge bank or I analyzed things in the way that I was told to by the teacher. I never stopped to consider what learning would look like if we were able to combine not only both of these perspectives, but all of them. In a way, when we are teaching or learning about social justice, we are also experiencing it. 
Below is my collage. I took images from all of the cultures and people that I found in my research and combined them together. Using photoshop, it was almost too easy to blend the images of those kept behind barbed wire fences at concentraion camps with the images of Syrian refugees from just a few years ago. The Jewish refugees leaving their camp looks too similar to the Israeli people in 2019. My collage is meant to demonstrate the link between all of these people. I wanted to show that we are not all that different.   

https://datavizblog.com/2013/03/09/dataviz-history-the-slave-ship-chart-that-kindled-the-abolitionist-movement-1788/
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/10/15/141325143/a-woman-of-photos-and-firsts-ruth-gruber-at-100
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ruth-gruber