(StraightNews.org) – Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the famous therapist who enjoyed a global media career in the 1980s and 1990s, has died at age 96. Her publicist confirmed that she died peacefully, surrounded by family, at her New York City home. Known for her outspoken and frank approach to sexuality, New York Governor Kathy Hochul appointed her the state’s Ambassador for Loneliness last year, the first such appointment in America. Governor Hochul paid tribute to the therapist online, saying she lived an extraordinary life and her memory was a “blessing.”
Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Germany in 1928, her Jewish family sent her to Switzerland to escape the Nazis, and after the war, she discovered they had been murdered in the Holocaust. Ms. Siegel later recounted the night the Nazis arrived at her door and took her father away to the Dachau concentration camp.
After leaving Switzerland, she moved to British-controlled Palestine and campaigned for an independent Israel. In 1950, the future therapist returned to Europe, where she studied briefly in Paris before emigrating to the United States and settling in New York. After obtaining a sociology degree, she completed an educational doctorate from Colombia University. At the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, she subsequently trained as a sexuality therapist.
After two brief failed marriages, Dr. Ruth married fellow Holocaust survivor Manfred Westheimer at age 32 and had two children. Her career took off in 1980, at age 52, when she secured her first New York City radio show, which proved enormously popular and was eventually broadcast nationwide.
A regular on the late-night talk show circuit, Westheimer attracted some criticism for her use of taboo sexual language, with some accusing her of promoting immorality. An abortion defender, she was also a staunch ally of the gay community and said she could relate to them because of the ill-treatment she endured in Nazi Germany.
Westheimer authored 45 books and starred in Becoming Dr. Ruth, a one-woman play that premiered on Broadway in 1997.
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