By FIONA RAE
"I felt that I must use whatever talents I have with words and pictures to try to awaken the world to the horror of what was happening after the war.
"I wanted to grab the world by its lapels and shout, 'Don't you know what's happening?' Words were my weapons."
This is the real Ruth Gruber talking. She's a journalist and author of some 15 books, one of which inspired Leon Uris' bestseller Exodus.
Gruber is also the main character in Haven (the second of two parts screens tonight), the true story, based on her book, of a group of Jewish refugees and their journey from Italy to America in 1944.
At the time, Gruber was working for the Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, and when President Roosevelt, in an effort to show some measure of humanity, allowed 1000 Jewish refugees to enter America, Gruber went to oversee the journey and the refugees' settlement in the US.
She has had a remarkable career. She was born in 1911 and completed a PhD at just 20. She become a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and was the first journalist, man or woman, to report from the Soviet Arctic.
The Haven story is, of course, an incredible one. In last week's episode, we saw how Gruber argued to be sent to Naples to escort the refugees. The War Refugee Board agreed because it thought she would be ineffectual.
In Naples, 1000 refugees were chosen from 36,000 desperate to escape Hitler. Many of their stories were documented by Gruber (who is also a photographer), but when the ship reached America all efforts were made to keep the story from the media.
It seems that Roosevelt wanted to appear humane, but not too much so - he feared opening the floodgates to an immigrant tide and risking the ire of congress and voters.
Tonight's episode is the more interesting, as Gruber fights politics and racism in her own country. As we saw last week, the refugees faced the awful irony of being locked in a camp when they arrived in the US.
It's a shame then, given the raw material, that the mini-series is of the lay-it-on-thick variety, smothering the drama with soaring violins. Such compelling stories don't need that kind of embellishment.
And the message, the message, always with the message. Haven the mini-series is a polemic, weepie and history lesson all rolled into one - a very blunt instrument.
English actress Natasha Richardson is not altogether riveting in the title role, her low-key approach and closed-mouth Brooklyn accent getting in the way of her character's legendary smarts.
The mini-series gets bogged down in personal stories, too - such as Gruber's relationship with a German told in black-and-white flashback, and the burgeoning love affair between two refugees - as if the producers had to tug at every heartstring possible.
Still, at a time of remembrance it can't hurt to be reminded, even a little melodramatically, of just what was at stake in the last world war.
* Haven, TV3, 8.30 pm
Who needs the violins with a story like this?
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