![Dr Ruth Westheimer at home last year. She wrote more than 40 books over a long career](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/news/2024/07/13/TELEMMGLPICT000385465671_17208976734600_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq3WqnzzFVOd3kL3meakj0EvFE_H3FSWrqYPAuvIqIazI.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Sex therapist ‘Dr Ruth’ dies aged 96
Famed TV doctor and Holocaust survivor was propelled to stardom in her fifties by hit show Sexually Speaking
![Dr Ruth Westheimer at home last year. She wrote more than 40 books over a long career](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/news/2024/07/13/TELEMMGLPICT000385465671_17208976734600_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bq3WqnzzFVOd3kL3meakj0EvFE_H3FSWrqYPAuvIqIazI.jpeg?imwidth=680)
Sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer, famed for frankly discussing topics from HIV to abortion on national TV, has died aged 96.
The Holocaust survivor died on Friday at her Manhattan home, surrounded by her friends and family, according to publicist and friend Pierre Lehu.
The 4ft 7in sex guru was propelled to stardom in her fifties for speaking openly about sex and taboo issues.
She gained national recognition for her local 15-minute radio show Sexually Speaking and described her work as dishing out bedroom advice “like good chicken soup”.
Dr Westheimer defended abortion rights, suggested older people have sex after a good night’s sleep and was an outspoken advocate of condom use.
![Dr Westheimer was known for speaking openly about sex and taboo issues](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/news/2024/07/13/TELEMMGLPICT000385464059_17208976936320_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqpVlberWd9EgFPZtcLiMQf0Rf_Wk3V23H2268P_XkPxc.jpeg?imwidth=350)
The German-born broadcaster soon became a fixture of late-night television chat shows. In 1983 she wrote Dr Ruth’s Guide to Good Sex, the first of her more than 40 books.
The Wall Street Journal once described her accent as “a cross between Henry Kissinger and Minnie Mouse”.
“If we could bring about talking about sexual activity the way we talk about diet - the way we talk about food - without it having this kind of connotation that there’s something not right about it, then we would be a step further,” she told TV host Johnny Carson in 1982.
Dr Westheimer was a stuanch supporter of the LGBTQ community. She said she was moved to defend people deemed by some far-Right Christians to be “subhuman” because of her own past.
![Dr Westheimer vehemently defended the LGBTQ community](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/en-us/news/2024/07/13/TELEMMGLPICT000385467305_17208977166240_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqtGQB12KHxxQCrwnTZkX0nwgWqwm85JEWpGVhFb46TTg.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Born in 1928 as Karola Ruth Siegel, at aged 10 Dr Westheimer’s parents sent her to Switzerland to escape Kristallnacht - the 1938 pogrom that served as a precursor to the Holocaust.
She never saw her parents again and believed they had been killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
As a teenager Dr Westheimer moved to Palestine and joined the Haganah, the underground movement for Israeli independence. She was trained as a sniper, but maintains she never shot at anyone.
Her legs were severely wounded when a bomb exploded in her dormitory, killing many of her friends.
She moved to Paris with her first husband, an Israeli soldier in 1950, where she studied psychology at the Sorbonne.
When her marriage ended five years later, Dr Westheimer moved to New York with her second husband.
She later married Manfred Westheimer, a refugee from Nazi Germany.
She is survived by two children, Joel and Miriam, and four grandchildren.