Dr. Ruth, renowned sex therapist and Holocaust survivor, dead at 96

• Dr. Ruth Westheimer, an internationally renowned sex therapist, has died at age 96.
• Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Westheimer escaped the Holocaust as a child. She never saw her parents again.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the legendary sex therapist, media personality, and Holocaust survivor who died Friday aged 96 years old, loved turtles.

She collected figurines of them, and clustered them into her living room in New York City. In 2015, Westheimer even wrote a children's book, "Leopold," starring a turtle.

To her colleagues and loved ones who spent time in her home, it may have seemed like a sweet quirk — turtles are cute, after all.

Not quite.

Last year, Westheimer shared with Dr. Justin Garcia, a leading sexuality researcher, why she loved turtles so much.

"Because they have to stick their neck out before they move forward," Westheimer said.

Garcia laughed. "That's what you've had to do your whole career," he told her. "Boy oh boy, did she stick her neck out to educate America and the world."

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

Throughout her life, she led by example, helping others to envision and build fulfilling lives in spite of unimaginable hardship. Even in her final years, she championed the pursuit of sexual pleasure.

She burst into popular culture in the 1980s, first with her New York City radio show "Sexually Speaking" and later, her talk show "Good Sex with Dr. Ruth Westheimer."

At a time when discussing sexual health in mainstream media was considered taboo, Westheimer, a diminutive but unreserved woman, became known for her candid sex talks that provided an education to Americans nationwide. She spoke with compassion about condom use during the AIDS crisis, and created space for people of all genders and sexuality. Fans affectionately took to calling her "Dr. Ruth," a mononym that stuck.

"If you want to understand the history of sex and sex research and sex therapy, Dr. Ruth's contributions to that are enormous and can't be understated," Garcia told Business Insider.

Garcia, now executive director of the Kinsey Institute, a world leader in sex and gender research, first heard Westheimer speak at Binghamton University, where he was teaching a course in human sexuality from 2009 to 2011. Even then, decades into her career, she was pushing researchers to expand their perspectives. To take a more holistic approach to sexuality research.

"I'll never forget that event," Garcia told Business Insider. He remembered how the "whole community" came to see her. "Suddenly, it was this realization that talking about sex and relationships wasn't relegated to just clinical psychology or medicine."

Westheimer, a Jewish orphan, became a psychologist against all odds

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

But that all ended in 1938 when her family was separated during Nazi raids in Frankfurt. At 10, that was the last time she ever saw her father, mother, or grandmother again.

Following a riot that killed 91 Jews, Westheimer's parents sent her to an orphanage in Switzerland along with 300 other Jewish German children, through a protection system called Kindertransport.

"They gave me life twice," Westheimer said of her parents to German news outlet BILD am Sonntag. "First when I was born. And the second time when they sent me on the Kindertransport."

Nazis took Westheimer's family to concentration camps soon after her departure via Kindertransport. Her father and grandmother died due to the inhumane conditions, while her mother was declared missing.

"I don't think of myself as a survivor. I think of myself as an orphan of the Holocaust," Westheimer said in "Ask Dr. Ruth," a 2019 documentary about her life.

With just the contents of a suitcase and a handful of letters and pictures of 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. She never shot anyone during her career there, but she did recover from shrapnel wounds on her legs during an explosion on her 20th birthday.

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

Once in Manhattan, Westheimer poured her energy into earning her master's degree in sociology from The New School, and then her doctorate in education from Columbia University. She worked at Planned Parenthood and then New York-Presbyterian Hospital, spending her time educating others about sex.

Through it all, Westheimer built upon her personal life too. She divorced her first husband and married and divorced another before finally connecting with her third and final husband, Manfred "Fred" Westheimer, who she wrote "was the right husband for me." Fred was a fellow Holocaust survivor and lover of skiing, and Westheimer referred to their relationship as her "real marriage."

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

Westheimer spent her career fearlessly breaking down sexual taboos

Westheimer was one of the first on-air personalities to talk openly about sex and sexual health, sprinkling words like "erectile dysfunction," "vagina," and "penis" into her shows.

On the 1980s radio show "Sexually Speaking," New York City locals would call in, asking Westheimer to help them solve their sexual conundrums. No matter the topic — clitoral stimulation, masturbation, or a sexual attraction to peanut butter — Westheimer would always respond seriously, with a signature mixture of conviction and good-naturedness that earned her the title of one of America's most trusted sex educators.

"I think that sexual activity should be fun and should be human," Westheimer told David Letterman during an interview on his talk show in 1982.

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

In 2019, Westheimer told NPR's Scott Simon she wanted to leave her troubling childhood in the past, and avoided answering questions about it, with the exception of her documentary. She much preferred to focus on what she considered the two greatest achievements of her life: Teaching sexual literacy, and being a mother and grandmother.

"And you NPR people, loud and clear, Hitler is dead, and my four grandchildren are fantastic in their lives," she said.

The ultimate champion of human connection

Sticking her neck out until the end, Westheimer was always concocting new projects.

In 2022, she released a revised edition of her book "The Art of Arousal," a collection of paintings, sculptures, and drawings that depict eroticism throughout history. She kept up interviews — speaking to People magazine every year, on her birthday, to promote sexual understanding. On her 94th birthday, she shared a mantra we should all live by: "To make sure not to put sex life on the sideline, even in older years. But to keep it alive." On her 95th, she said: "Talking about sex from morning til night! That keeps you young."

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

Westheimer was troubled by the rising rates of loneliness, triggered by her own experience of solitude during the pandemic, as The New York Times reported. She wanted to continue dispelling taboo around sexual dysfunction. She also wanted to widen her lens, to look at human connection more broadly.

"I still will talk about orgasms," Westheimer told the Times, "but I've done that." She added: "So now I am going to say, let's go and see how we can help people who don't have a sexual problem."

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

Taking charge of her new role, Westheimer joined forces with US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, whose primary focus is combating modern loneliness. She had ideas for community events to inspire people to be productive, creative, and collaborative. Going to the theater or starting new hobbies.

That was Westheimer through and through, Garcia said. Working with her in the last 18 months, he was struck by her "deep appreciation for freedom."

"It's still so critical for people to keep questioning and thinking about the role of sex and relationships in our daily lives," Garcia said. "Ruth was really a vanguard, an explorer in helping us all get there and continue to push that forward."