Unfinished Business: Restoring Eastern Europe’s Desecrated Jewish Cemeteries.
January 2021
B’nai B’rith magazine quotes me (and many friends and colleagues) in a lengthy and unusually comprehensive article by Linda Topping Streitfeld that summarizes initiatives to preserve, protect, and restore Jewish cemeteries in Europe.
Author and scholar Ruth Ellen Gruber runs the website Jewish Heritage Europe, with deep resources on Jewish monuments and heritage sites. She has documented the resurgence of interest in Jewish culture and history over three decades. After the fall of the Soviet Union and communism in Eastern Europe, she said, “People wanted to fill in the blank spaces, and Jewish heritage was one of them.”
A Pilgrimage through Ancestral Lands
November 2020
Hilary Danailova has written an article in Hadassah Magazine about Jewish genealogy — and travel, in which I’m quoted, about the impact of digital resources.
“The revolution in genealogy travel is Facebook,” observed Ruth Ellen Gruber, a veteran journalist and Jewish travel authority […]. “There are a million Facebook groups, with subgroups for individual cemeteries, synagogues, shtetls and so forth. People can ask questions and get immediate answers from across the world.” Gruber oversees what is arguably the most comprehensive resource for Jewish heritage tourists: the web portal Jewish Heritage Europe, with daily updates on Jewish heritage-related sights, events and people across the continent, along with genealogy and travel insights.
Can’t Travel Due to COVID Restrictions? Take a Virtual Tour of Jewish History
Ukrainian Jewish Heritage: The Dark Side of Jewish Heritage Travel
August 15, 2017
A podcast and article on Nash Holos radio, about my “dark tourism” work, based on lectures I gave in Lviv and Glasgow and posts on Jewish Heritage Europe from my road trips in western Ukraine in July 2017
Ruth Ellen Gruber Reflects on Five Years of Jewish Heritage Europe
Liam Hoare interviews me for eJewish Philanthropy, February 19, 2017
Since its launch five years ago, Jewish Heritage Europe has become an essential one-stop shop for news, information, and resources concerning, as the name indeed suggests, matters of Jewish culture and built heritage in Europe: museums; synagogues; cemeteries, and so on. Ruth Ellen Gruber, the author of Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe who has chronicled Jewish life in Europe for over twenty-five years for the JTA among other places, edits the site, which is supported by the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe. Here, I talk with Gruber about the site’s development and how European attitudes towards Jewish heritage have changed in the time she has been reporting on these issues.
10 great Places to Experience Jewish History
An interview with me in USA Today, April 16, 2016
When the Jewish holiday of Passover starts at sundown on April 22, celebrants will recount the Biblical story of Exodus, chronicling the Israelites’ escape from Egypt to the Holy Land. But important Jewish heritage sites are scattered around the globe, says Ruth Ellen Gruber, who runs the website www.jewish-heritage-europe.eu. Many are threatened, she says, but “all of them are special.” She shares some favorites with Larry Bleiberg for USA TODAY.
Read a profile of me and my Jewish heritage work by Hilary Danailova in the New York Jewish Week
October 13, 2015
[…] The thrill of discovery is something Gruber shares with a growing number of enthusiasts through the website she oversees, Jewish Heritage Europe. A project of the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe, JHE is a comprehensive web portal for all things Jewish overseas: festivals, institutions, scholarship, synagogues and cemeteries.
Under Gruber’s direction, JHE has evolved into an essential travel resource. With an engaging redesign and the recent launch of “Have Your Say,” a feature that invites interactive commentary, JHE makes Jewish Europe more accessible — and more communal — than ever […].
Italy’s “Little Jerusalem” Opens the Doors to Jewish History
Listen to an NPR story by Sylvia Poggioli in which I am interviewed about Jewish heritage in Europe and the European Day of Jewish Culture. Sept 14, 2014
Europe Tunes In to Its Own Country Music Scene, Wall St. Journal, August 11, 2014
I’m quoted in this article by Ginanne Brownell about European country music.
“Bluegrass festivals in the Czech Republic are among the best in the world,” says Ruth Ellen Gruber, an American journalist and writer based in Italy who runs the European blog “Sauerkraut Cowboys.” The Czech town of Kopidlno has been hosting an annual bluegrass festival since 1973. […]
Photo © Ruth Ellen Gruber
The half hour interview can be streamed or downloaded as an mp3 — and it includes lots of tracks from the new double CD
A Jewish Cultural Revival — Minus the Jews
I am interviewed in an article in Ha’aretz, October 26, 2012
28 Years after Expelling U.S. Reporter, Poland Awards Her Order of Merit, Sept. 2011
USA Today story about Poland awarding me the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit
I’m Interviewed on Czech Radio (in English…) March 16, 2009
I speaks about both Jewish heritage and European country music
Touring the Old World: Ruth Ellen Gruber Explores Eastern Europe
Interview in The Forward, February 6, 2008
Article about me in Karl May Magazine (in German) August 31, 2006
“Tommywood” column about me by Tom Teicholz, January 21, 2005
VIDEOS
Whose heritage? Jewish heritage and social engagement
My Keynote talk at the conference on Jewish Cultural Heritage, held in June 2017 at the POLIN Museum in Warsaw — it was three days after I had an eye operation so I wasn’t 100 percent, but here is the full talk.
Italian media report including my talks in Calabria for Holocaust Memorial Day, Jan. 27, 2012
I Speak about Jewish Heritage in Romania, Radauti, Romania, Sept. 2009
Two-part Interview with me on a Genealogy TV show, Tracing Your Family Roots (2008)
I speak about researching and writing my book National Geographic Jewish Heritage Europe: A Guide to Eastern Europe
