Karola Ruth Westheimer, better known as Dr. Ruth, is a German-American sex therapist, media personality, author, radio, television talk show host, sniper, and Holocaust survivor. Her media career began in 1980 with the radio show Sexually Speaking, which continued until 1990. She is the author of 45 books on sex and sexuality.
About Ruth Westheimer in brief
Karola Ruth Westheimer, better known as Dr. Ruth, is a German-American sex therapist, media personality, author, radio, television talk show host, sniper, and Holocaust survivor. Her media career began in 1980 with the radio show Sexually Speaking, which continued until 1990. She has hosted several series on the Lifetime Channel and other cable television networks from 1984 to 1993. She is the author of 45 books on sex and sexuality. Westheimer was born Karola Ruth Siegel on June 4, 1928, in Wiesenfeld, Germany, the only child of Orthodox Jews, Irma, a housekeeper, and Julius Siegel, a notions wholesaler and son of the family for whom Irma worked. Her father was taken away by the Nazis a week after Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, in 1938. Her mother was killed during the Holocaust, but there is no specific information about her death, or about how and when she died. In 1950, Westheimer moved to France, where she studied and then taught psychology at the University of Paris. In 1956, she immigrated to the United States, settling in Washington Heights, Manhattan. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1965.
She regained her German citizenship in 2007 through the German Citizenship Project that enabled descendants of Germans deprived of their citizenship during the Third Reich to reclaim their citizenship without losing the citizenship of their home country. She was seriously wounded in action by an exploding shell during the 1947–1949 Palestine war, and it was several months before she was able to walk again. She later joined the Haganah in Jerusalem. Because of her diminutive height of 4 ft 7in, she was trained as a scout and sniper. At 17, she 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. \” Westheimer decided to emigrate to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine, there, at 17, and became a sex therapist. She also taught at Lehman College, Brooklyn College, Columbia Point University and West Point University. She went on to work as a postdoctoral researcher for Helen Singer Kaplan at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
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