2023-06-03 02:01:00
Ruth Westheimer survived the Holocaust and rose to fame in the US with radio and TV shows. She is 1.44 meters tall, but “if greatness were measured in courage, determination and hard work, this little woman would have to be 2.50 meters tall,” Newsday once wrote regarding her.
Ruth Westheimer turns 95 on Sunday, June 4th, but what is probably the most famous sex therapist in the world is full of energy. A play regarding the life of the German-born “Dr. Ruth” has just been performed in Cleveland in the US state of Ohio, the documentary film “Ask Dr. Ruth” was released in 2020 and shortly before that the German Consul General David Gill had told her in New York Awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.
“Dr. Ruth” is a cult – and has been for decades, since she made her breakthrough with a radio show in the early 1980s. With an infectious giggle, “Dr. Ruth” gave sex tips and juggled terms like ejaculation and masturbation without inhibitions. The 15-minute question and answer program “Sexually Speaking” on a New York local station was followed by invitations from television stations around the world. Hundreds of thousands sought the expert’s advice under the protection of anonymity. “Her name and the distinctive tone of her voice are inextricably linked to the subject of sex,” the New York Times once said.
Parents died in the concentration camp in Auschwitz
Karola Ruth Siegel was born in 1928 in Wiesenfeld near Frankfurt to a Jewish family. At the age of ten, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, she arrived in Switzerland on a children’s transport. This is how she escaped the Holocaust, but she never saw her parents and her beloved grandmother once more. The Nazis murdered her mother and father in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
After the war, still a teenager, she went to Palestine and fought underground for a free Israel. After being badly injured by a shell, she began studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. A check from the German government for 5,000 marks in compensation for suffering enabled her to go to the USA in 1956. There she continued her studies, married Manfred Westheimer and had two children. “Dr. Ruth” is only 1.44 meters tall – but “if greatness were measured in courage, determination and hard work, this little woman would have to be 2.50 meters tall,” Newsday once wrote.
Always a guest in Frankfurt
“Dr. Ruth” has always returned to her hometown of Frankfurt for the book fair. “I’m avoiding the train station. But in my old apartment at Brahmsstraße 8, in the north end, I looked around once more,” she once said in an interview. “It’s difficult for me, but I’m walking proud and with a straight back. Hitler didn’t win! He wanted me to die. Instead, I now have children and grandchildren.”
How is she still so fit and happy at 95? “My secret is that every day I ask myself: What can I do tonight? And then I call someone and we do something.” She no longer has a car, but drives a taxi, and she organizes all her appointments over the phone. “I don’t use email, but I talk on the phone all day.”
And she’s on Twitter. At the end of May, she posted a photo of an encounter with a newlyweds in a park. She wrote: “They were very pleased to see me. They seemed to think that I might secure their sex life in marriage. Of course I hope so.” Within days, more than 1.3 million people had viewed the photo.
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