Westheimer, Ruth K. (Ruth Karola), 1928-

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.[1] 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,[2] but never saw combat.[1] 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". The New York Times noted in 1984 that she had risen "from obscurity to almost instant stardom."[citation needed] 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. Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel, in the small village of Wiesenfeld (now part of Karlstadt am Main), in Germany.[4][5] 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. 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. She 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.[7][17] 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.[17] In the orphanage she was given cleaning responsibilities, and took on the role of a caregiver and mother-like figure to the younger children.[9] She remained at the orphanage for six years.[8] 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.[14][18]

While at the Swiss orphanage, Westheimer corresponded with her mother and grandmother via letters. Their letters ceased in 1941.[5][10] Her father was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.[19] 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.[19] In addition to Westheimer's parents, all of her other relatives were killed in Nazi concentration camps.[3] After World War II ended, Westheimer decided to immigrate to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine at 16 years of age.[20][9] 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.Westheimer joined the Haganah Jewish Zionist underground paramilitary organization (later, the Israel Defense Forces) in Jerusalem.[24][25][23][26] Because of her diminutive height of 4 ft 7 in (1.40 m), she was trained as a scout and sniper.[ n 1950, at the age of 22 Westheimer moved to France.[9] There she studied psychology under psychologist Jean Piaget at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne), and earned an undergraduate degree despite not having had a high school education In 1956, at 28 years of age and with a newborn daughter, Westheimer immigrated to the United States, settling in Washington Heights, Manhattan.[41][42][43] She worked as a maid, initially for 75 cents an hour and later for one dollar an hour, to put herself through graduate school.[44][45][46][47]

Westheimer earned an M.A. degree in sociology from The New School in 1959, with the help of a scholarship.[44][48] She was a single mother, and an organization named Jewish Family Service paid for her daughter to stay with a foster family during the day, and then when her daughter was three years old at a German Jewish Orthodox nursery school, as Westheimer worked and went to classes at The New School.[49] She then earned a doctorate at 42 years of age, as she received a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in Family-Life Studies in 1970 with the help of a scholarship, studying under Shirley Zussman.[44][19][50][20][51] She then trained as a sex therapist at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center/Cornell Medical School, working for seven years under sex therapist Helen Singer Kaplan, two years training under her and five years training others.[16][52][38][53]

Westheimer became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1965.[54] She married, for the third time, in 1967.[9] She regained her German citizenship in 2007 through the German Citizenship Project that enabled descendants of Germans deprived of their citizenship during Nazi rule to reclaim their citizenship without losing the citizenship of their home country.[55][56]