The Drama is Based on the Experiences of Ruth Gruber As Detailed in Her Book

Anne Bancroft, Henry Czerny, Colm Feore, Bruce Greenwood, Hal Holbrook, Martin Landau and William Petersen Also Star.

HAVEN, a new four-hour mini-series starring Tony Award-winning Natasha Richardson ("Cabaret"), based on Ruth Gruber's non-fiction book will be broadcast Sunday, Feb. 11 and Wednesday, Feb 14 (9:00-11:00 PM ET/PT: each night) on the CBS Television Network. The drama tells the moving true story of Ruth Gruber (Richardson), a young Jewish U.S. government official who, in 1944, helped escort nearly 1,000 Holocaust survivors from war-torn Europe to a temporary haven in America.

Anne Bancroft ("Deep in My Heart"), Henry Czerny ("Mission Impossible"), Colm Feore ("The Insider"), Bruce Greenwood ("Double Jeopardy"), Hal Holbrook ("The Firm"), Martin Landau ("Ed Wood") and William Petersen (C.S.I.") also star.

Delighted at the news that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has agreed to bring 1,000 European Jewish refugees to the United States - yet frustrated that their number is not higher, impassioned Special Assistant Ruth Gruber convinces her boss, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes (Holbrook), Jackson Connolly (Petersen) from the Treasury Department and other members of the War Refugee Board that she should escort the frightened refugees on their journey. Ruth's mother (Bancroft) tires to dissuade her from going to war-torn Europe, but her father (Landau), with whom she shares an especially strong bond, gives her the support she seeks.

When she arrives in Europe to start her mission, Ruth is taken aback by the desperate, haggard faces of the thousands of Jewish refugees who were hoping to be among the 1,000 - but were denied. She first meets the chosen refugees on the Henry Gibbins liberty ship, where she learns that there is a rule that the soldiers and refugees can have no contact with one another. Ruth tries to change this rule, believing that fraternization would make the soldiers feel differently about the refugees, whom the soldiers resist for having kept hundreds more wounded war veterans from being on the ship.

As Ruth listens to the refugees' horror-filled war stories, she begins to understand better what she must do to help them finally feel safe. She is quick to bond with many of them, including Bruno (Feore), a former vaudeville star from Berlin who was forced to perform for the Nazis when he was at Dachau; Ernst (Czerny), whose dark war-time experiences have left him with a deep mistrusts of other, and Eva, whose means of saving her husband's life at the hands of the Nazis has greatly strained their marriage.

After some close calls with Nazi aircraft and a U-boat, the soldiers and the refugees begin to mix with positive results. Buoyed by her many small successes during the journey, Ruth is determined to get the American people behind her plight to save more refugees. However, her efforts to hold a press conference in the U.S. are thwarted by the State Department, which does not want to bring more Jews into the country.

To Ruth's further dismay, the refugees' first impression of the U.S. is a negative one. After boarding trains reminiscent of the ones that brought them to Nazi concentration camps, the frightened newcomers arrive at a stark army base in Oswego, N.Y., where they are kept in line by armed soldiers. To make matters worse, an embarrassed Ruth must inform them that they cannot leave the camp until the end of the war - despite the fact that many of them have relatives in the U.S. who would gladly take them into their homes.

While some of the residents resist accepting their new neighbors, numerous townspeople - including the influential Myles Billingsley Sr. (Greenwood) - eventually open their hearts to them. As friendships begin to form between the two groups, they join to overcome times and to celebrate hope-filled occasions. Ruth attempts to parley her success to persuade the government to admit more refugees and to grant citizenship to those in Oswego. As she pursues her goal, Ruth discovers some staggering secrets about government bigotry and the politics of war.

Peter Sussman ("Joan of Arc"), Paulette Breen ("Down Will Come Baby") and Dan Paulson ("Best Friends for Life") are the HAVEN executive producers; Mark Winemarker ("Flowers for Algernon") is the producer. Haven is a production of Alliance Atlantis in association with Citadel Entertainment and Paulette Breen Production. John Gray ("The Hunley") directed the drama from a scrip by Suzette Couture ("Jesus") based on Gruber's book Haven: The Dramatic Story of 1,000 World War II Refugees and How They Came to America. HAVEN is sponsored in part by American International Group, Inc. (AIG). AIG is represented by MindShare, a WPP Group company.