Ruth Klüger-Aliav
Ukraine-born Romanian and Israeli Jewish Zionist activist
Ruth Klüger Aliav (née Polishuk) (Hebrew: רות קלוגר-אליאב; April 27, 1910 – February 16, 1980) was a Ukrainian-born Romanian and Israeli Jewish Zionist activist, assisting in the Aliyah Bet before and after World War II.
Childhood and studies
Born in Kiev, Ukraine (then in the Russian Empire until 1918, lived in her youth in Cernăuţi (Czernowitz), Bucovina, then part of the Kingdom of Romania, and nowadays in Ukraine), she was a graduate from the University of Vienna who could speak nine languages.
Early activities
Ruth Klüger went to Palestine after her marriage in 1930 to Emanuel Klüger, and later joined Aliya Bet, being sent on missions to Romania and other European countries. She was one of ten original members of the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, a Zionist group dedicated to helping Jews escape the Holocaust in Europe. Fluent in nine languages, she raised funds and helped organize the ships the Tiger Hill (September 1939) and the Hilda (January 1940) to carry Jewish refugees to Palestine. After Romania became an Axis Power, she escaped to Istanbul, Turkey and there together with other Mossad agents organized the dispatch of the ship the Darien II in March 1941. A full account of these deeds is in her autobiography The Last Escape, which was a best seller in 1974, and filmed as The Darien Dilemma (2005).
She was a Mossad agent in Cairo from 1941 to 1944. In 1944, with Charles de Gaulle's help, she arrived in a liberated Paris and was the first Mossad agent to contact survivors of the Holocaust.
1945
In October 1945, Klüger acquired a troopship, the Ascanious, from an American, Colonel Ernest Witte, of Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff. It was planned that the vessel would convey orphans to Palestine and it was soon crammed with 2,600 Holocaust survivors.
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