Heinrich Gruber was born in Stoleberg, Germany, on 24th June, 1891. After studying theology in Bonn, Berlin and Ultrecht, before becoming a social worker and later the director of a home for retarded boys.

A strong opponent of Adolf Hitler he joined up with Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoffer in the Confessional Church in an attempt to resist the racial policies in Nazi Germany. This included the establishment of an organisation in Berlin that helped to arrange the emigration of Jews threaten with being sent to concentration camps.

In December, 1940, Gruber was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp before being transferred to Dachau.

Gruber was released in 1943 and after the Second World War he became Dean of St Mary's Church in Berlin. Gruber became a peace-activist and was a strong advocate of nuclear disarmament. He also argued that the German people had a collective guilt for the crimes committed in Nazi Germany.

Gruber was a witness at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 and continued to stress the moral obligation of Germany to the Jewish people. Heinrich Gruber died of a heart attack in 1975.