Dr Ruth K Westheimer Popular Books

Dr Ruth K Westheimer Biography & Facts

Karola Ruth Westheimer (née Siegel; born June 4, 1928), better known as Dr. Ruth, is a German-American sex therapist, talk show host, author, professor, and Holocaust survivor. Westheimer was born in Germany to a Jewish family. As the Nazis came to power, her parents sent the ten-year-old girl to a school in Switzerland for safety, remaining behind themselves because of her elderly grandmother. They were both subsequently sent to concentration camps by the Gestapo, where they were killed. After World War II ended, she immigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine. Despite being only 4 feet 7 inches (1.39 m) tall and 17 years of age, she joined the Haganah, and was trained as a sniper, but never saw combat. On her 20th birthday, Westheimer was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during a mortar fire attack on Jerusalem during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, and almost lost both of her feet. Moving to Paris, France two years later, she studied psychology at the Sorbonne. Immigrating to the United States in 1956, she worked as a maid to put herself through graduate school, earned an M.A. degree in sociology from The New School in 1959, and earned a doctorate at 42 years of age from Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1970. Over the next decade, she taught at a number of universities, and had a private sex therapy practice. Westheimer's media career began in 1980 with the radio call-in show Sexually Speaking, which continued until 1990. In 1983 it was the top-rated radio show in the area, in the country's largest radio market. She then launched a television show, The Dr. Ruth Show, which by 1985 attracted 2 million viewers a week. She became known for giving serious advice while being candid, but also warm, cheerful, funny, and respectful, and for her tag phrase: "Get some". In 1984 The New York Times noted that she had risen "from obscurity to almost instant stardom." She hosted several series on the Lifetime Channel and other cable television networks from 1984 to 1993. She became a household name and major cultural figure, appeared on several network TV shows, co-starred in a movie with Gérard Depardieu, appeared on the cover of People, sang on a Tom Chapin album, appeared in several commercials, and hosted Playboy videos. She is the author of 45 books on sex and sexuality. The one-woman 2013 play Becoming Dr. Ruth, written by Mark St. Germain, is about her life, as is the 2019 documentary, Ask Dr. Ruth, directed by Ryan White. Westheimer has been inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, and awarded the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal, the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the Leo Baeck Medal, the Planned Parenthood Margaret Sanger Award, and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Early life and education Germany Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel, in the small village of Wiesenfeld (now part of Karlstadt am Main), in Germany. She was the only child of Orthodox Jews, Irma (née Hanauer), a housekeeper, and Julius Siegel, a notions wholesaler and son of the family for whom Irma worked. From the age of one, she lived in an apartment in Frankfurt with her parents and her paternal grandmother, Selma, who was a widow. She was given an early grounding in Judaism by her father, who took her regularly to the synagogue in the Nordend district of Frankfurt, where they lived. Her father, 38 years old at the time, was taken away by the Nazis who sent him to the Dachau concentration camp a week after Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass" when Nazis burned down 10,000 Jewish stores as well as Jewish homes and synagogues, in November 1938. Westheimer cried while her father was taken away by Gestapo men in glossy black leather boots who loaded him on a truck, while her grandmother handed the Nazis money, pleading, "Take good care of my son." Switzerland Westheimer's mother and grandmother decided that Nazi Germany was too dangerous for her, due to the growing Nazi violence. Therefore, a few weeks later, in January 1939 they sent her on the Kindertransport organized Jewish children's rescue train to Switzerland, though she desperately did not want to leave. Westheimer, age 10, from that moment on was never hugged again as a child. Westheimer arrived at an orphanage of a Jewish charity in Heiden, Switzerland, as one of 300 Jewish children, some as young as six years of age. By the end of World War II, nearly all of them were orphans, as their parents never made it out of Germany, and were murdered by the Nazis. In the orphanage she was given cleaning responsibilities, and took on the role of a caregiver and mother-like figure to the younger children. She remained at the orphanage for six years. Westheimer, being a girl, was not allowed to take classes at the local school. However, a fellow orphan boy would sneak her his textbooks at night so she could read them in secret and continue her education. While at the Swiss orphanage, Westheimer corresponded with her mother and grandmother via letters. Their letters ceased in 1941. Her father was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942. Her mother was killed during the Holocaust, but there is no information about the specific circumstances of her killing. In the database at the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Westheimer's mother is categorized as verschollen, or 'disappeared'/murdered. In addition to Westheimer's parents, all of her other relatives were killed in Nazi concentration camps. For many years she lived with an "irrational guilt," that if she had stayed in Germany she could have saved her parents. But now she says the guilt has been replaced by an admiration for her parents' sacrifice in sending her to safety, saying: "I would not have the courage to send my own children away like that." Israel After World War II ended, Westheimer decided to immigrate to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine at 16 years of age. Immigrating there in September 1945, at 17 she joined and worked in agriculture at Kibbutz Ramat David, changed her name from Karola to her middle name Ruth, and "first had sexual intercourse on a starry night, in a haystack, without contraception." She later told The New York Times that "I am not happy about that, but I know much better now and so does everyone who listens to my radio program." She next lived on Moshav Nahalal, and then Kibbutz Yagur. She then moved to Jerusalem in 1948 to study early childhood education. Westheimer joined the Haganah Jewish Zionist underground paramilitary organization (later, the Israel Defense Forces) in Jerusalem. Because of her diminutive height of 4 ft 7 in (1.40 m), she was trained as a scout and sniper. Of this experience, she said, "I never killed anybody, but I know how to throw hand grenades and shoot." She became an ace sniper, and learned to assemble a rifle in the dark. When she was 90 years old, she demonstrated that she was still able to put together a Sten gun with her eyes closed. In 1948, on her 20th.... Discover the Dr Ruth K Westheimer popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Dr Ruth K Westheimer books.