Dr. Ruth, renowned sex therapist and Holocaust survivor, dies at the age of 96

• Dr. Ruth Westheimer, an internationally renowned sex therapist, has died at the age of 96.

• Westheimer was born in Germany to Jewish parents and escaped the Holocaust as a child. She never saw her parents again.

• Westheimer became known in the 1980s for her frank sex advice and good-natured manner on her radio show “Sexually Speaking.”

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the legendary sex therapist, media personality and Holocaust survivor who died Friday at the age of 96, loved turtles.

She collected figurines of them and displayed them in her living room in New York City. In 2015, Westheimer even wrote a children’s book called “Leopold,” in which a turtle plays the main role.

Her colleagues and family members who spent time at her home may have found this a cute quirk—turtles are cute, after all.

Not quite.

Last year, Westheimer told Dr. Justin Garcia, a leading sex researcher, why she loved turtles so much.

“Because they have to put their heads on the line before they can move forward,” Westheimer said.

Garcia laughed. “You’ve had to do that your whole career,” he told her. “Man, man, did she really try so hard to educate America and the world.”

Westheimer died at her home in New York on Friday, her publicist Pierre Lehu told the Associated Press.

Throughout her life, she was a role model, helping others envision and build fulfilling lives despite unimaginable hardships. Even in her final years, she remained committed to the pursuit of sexual pleasure.

In the 1980s, she rose to prominence in pop culture, first with her New York radio show “Sexually Speaking” and later with her talk show “Good Sex with Dr. Ruth Westheimer.”

At a time when discussions about sexual health were considered taboo in the mainstream media, Westheimer, a petite but uninhibited woman, became known for her frank sex talk that provided good education to Americans across the country. She spoke compassionately about condom use during the AIDS crisis and created space for people of all genders and sexualities. Her fans affectionately called her “Dr. Ruth,” a mononym that stuck.

“If you want to understand the history of sex, sex research and sex therapy, Dr. Ruth’s contributions to that are enormous and cannot be underestimated,” Garcia told Business Insider.

Garcia, now executive director of the Kinsey Institute, a world-leading sex research institute, first heard Westheimer speak at Binghamton University, where he taught a course on human sexuality from 2009 to 2011. Even then, decades into her career, she was urging researchers to broaden their perspectives and take a more holistic approach to sex research.

“I’ll never forget that event,” Garcia told Business Insider. He recalled how the “whole community” came to her. “Suddenly I realized that talking about sex and relationships wasn’t just limited to clinical psychology or medicine.”

Westheimer, a Jewish orphan, became a psychologist despite all adversities

Born Karola Ruth Siegel in Germany, Westheimer lived with her parents and grandmother in Frankfurt, where she grew up baking and attending weekly Jewish services at the local synagogue, Business Insider previously reported.

But it all ended in 1938 when her family was separated during Nazi raids in Frankfurt. At the age of 10, she saw her father, mother or grandmother for the last time.

After an uprising in which 91 Jews died, Westheimer’s parents sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland along with 300 other Jewish German children as part of a protection system called the Kindertransport.

“They gave me life twice,” Westheimer told BILD am Sonntag about her parents. “The first time when I was born. And the second time when they sent me on the Kindertransport.”

Soon after her departure, Westheimer’s family was taken by the Nazis to concentration camps via Kindertransport. Her father and grandmother died due to the inhumane conditions, while her mother was reported missing.

“I don’t consider myself a survivor. I consider myself an orphan of the Holocaust,” Westheimer said in “Ask Dr. Ruth,” a 2019 documentary about her life.

With only the contents of a suitcase and a handful of letters and pictures from her family, Westheimer emigrated to the Palestinian territories on September 8, 1945, where she began a state-mandated career as a sniper in the Israeli military. During her career there, she never shot anyone, but recovered on her 20th birthday from shrapnel wounds to her legs sustained in an explosion.

Two years later, Westheimer moved to Paris with her first husband and began studying psychology at the Sorbonne. She worked as a kindergarten teacher to finance her education and became a professor at the University of Paris before moving to the United States in 1956.

Once in Manhattan, Westheimer devoted all her energy to earning a master’s degree in sociology from the New School and then a doctorate in education from Columbia University. She worked at Planned Parenthood and then at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and spent her time educating others about sex.

Throughout all of this, Westheimer was also working on her personal life. She divorced her first husband, married another, and divorced again before finally finding her third and final husband, Manfred “Fred” Westheimer, who she wrote was “the right husband for me.” Fred was another Holocaust survivor and ski enthusiast, and Westheimer referred to their relationship as her “true marriage.”

Together they had a son named Joel, and Fred adopted Miriam, Westheimer’s daughter, whom she had given birth to in 1957 during a previous marriage.

Westheimer spent her career fearlessly breaking sexual taboos

Westheimer was one of the first hosts to speak openly about sex and sexual health, incorporating words like “erectile dysfunction,” “vagina,” and “penis” into her shows.

On the 1980s radio show “Sexually Speaking,” New Yorkers would call in and ask Westheimer for help in solving their sexual problems. No matter what the topic – clitoral stimulation, masturbation, or sexual attraction to peanut butter – Westheimer always responded earnestly and with a typical mix of conviction and good nature that earned her the title of one of America’s most trusted sex educators.

“I think sexual activity should be fun and human,” Westheimer said in a 1982 interview with David Letterman on his talk show.

Her episodes also challenged the taboos and stereotypes surrounding pleasure at the time. Westheimer talked about the benefits of female masturbation and discussed gay sex, something that was unheard of in the mainstream media at the time.

In 2019, Westheimer told NPR’s Scott Simon that she wanted to put her difficult childhood behind her and avoided answering questions about it except for her documentary, preferring to focus on what she considered the two greatest accomplishments of her life: teaching sex education and being a mother and grandmother.

“And you, people of NPR, say it loud and clear: Hitler is dead and my four grandchildren are having fantastic lives,” she said.

The ultimate advocate of human connection

Westheimer remained committed until the end and constantly developed new projects.

In 2022, she released a revised edition of her book The Art of Arousal, a collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings depicting eroticism throughout history. She continued to do interviews – every year on her birthday she spoke to People magazine to promote sexual understanding. On her 94th birthday, she shared a mantra we should all live by: “Make sure not to put off your sex life as you get older. Keep it alive.” On her 95th, she said, “Talk about sex from morning to night! That keeps you young.”

A little over a year ago, Westheimer had a new idea that went beyond her repertoire as a sex therapist: She wanted to become New York’s ambassador against loneliness.

Westheimer was disturbed by the rising number of loneliness cases, sparked by her own experience of loneliness during the pandemic, as reported by the New York Times. She wanted to continue to break down the taboo surrounding sexual dysfunction. She also wanted to broaden her perspective and look at human relationships more comprehensively.

“I’m still going to talk about orgasms,” Westheimer told the Times, “but I’ve done that before.” She added, “Now I’m going to say, ‘Let’s go out and see how we can help people who don’t have a sexual problem.'”

In a rather unorthodox move, Westheimer began contacting state officials — a senator and the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul — asking for an official role, the Times reported. Eventually, Hochul agreed to Westheimer’s unusual request.

In her new role, Westheimer joined forces with U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, whose main concern is combating modern loneliness. She had ideas for community events to inspire people to be productive, creative and team-oriented. Go to the theater or take up new hobbies.

That was Westheimer through and through, Garcia said. During the last 18 months that he worked with her, he was impressed by her “deep appreciation for freedom.”

“It’s still so important for people to question and think about the role of sex and relationships in our daily lives,” Garcia said. “Ruth was really a trailblazer, an explorer who helped us all get there and keep pushing that forward.”

Read the original article on Business Insider