Gerda Weissmann Klein

Gerda Weissmann Klein (born May 8, 1924, Bielsko, Poland) is a Polish American writer and human rights activist.

Gerda Weissmann Klein
Weissmann Klein in 2011
BornGerda Weissmann
(1924-05-08) May 8, 1924
Bielsko, Poland
OccupationWriter, human rights activist
Notable works"All But My Life," "The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath," "One Survivor Remembers."
SpouseKurt Klein (1946–2002; his death)

Her autobiographical account of the Holocaust, All but My Life (1957), was adapted for the 1995 short film, One Survivor Remembers, which received an Academy Award and an Emmy Award, and was selected for the National Film Registry. She married Kurt Klein (1920–2002) in 1946.

The Kleins became advocates of Holocaust education and human rights, dedicating most of their lives to promoting tolerance and community service. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Gerda Weissmann Klein also founded Citizenship Counts, a nonprofit organization that champions the value and responsibilities of American citizenship. She has served on the governing board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which features her testimony in a permanent exhibit.

On February 15, 2011, Klein was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Early life
Gerda Weissmann Klein
Photo courtesy of school classmate Lucia Schwarzfuks Matzner, and Murray Matzner

Gerda Weissmann, the second child of Julius Weissmann (father) and (fur manufacturing executive) and Helene (mother) (née Mueckenbrunn) Weissmann (housewife), was born on May 8, 1924, in Bielsko (now Bielsko-Biała), Poland. She attended Notre Dame Gymnasium in Bielsko until the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Both of her parents and her older brother Arthur (b. 1919) died during the Holocaust. [1]

Life under the Nazis

On September 3, 1939, German troops invaded fifteen-year-old Gerda Weissmann's home in Bielsko, Poland. Shortly after the invasion began, the family received a telegram from Gerda's uncle saying the Germans were advancing quickly, and the family should leave Poland immediately. They stayed because Gerda's father had suffered a heart attack. His doctors advised that he not be moved or subjected to undue stress.[2]

After the invasion, Gerda and her family watched ethnic Germans living in Poland, whom they had considered friends, fly the Nazi flag and use the Hitler salute. In mid-October, 1939, Gerda's older brother, Arthur (age 19), received an order from the Germans, as a male between 16 and 50, to register for the army. On October 18, 1939, Arthur complied with the summons. His family never saw him again. Gerda and her parents were forced to live in the basement of their home and later in a Jewish ghetto.

In 1942, Gerda's father was sent to a death camp. He died in April, 1942. In June, 1942, Weissmann Klein was separated from her mother when the ghetto in which they were held was liquidated. As they boarded trucks, Weissmann Klein got out to keep from being separated from her mother. According to Weissmann Klein's account, the head of the local Jewish Council Judenrat, Moshe Merin, as he put her back in her truck, he stated, "You are too young to die." [3]

In Camps

Weissmann Klein was in several camps throughout the war: First, in Bolkenhain, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, working on looms (July 1942-August 1943). She was then transferred to Màrzdorf working physical labor in August 1943. When Weissmann Klein almost died from exhaustion due to overwork in Màrzdorf,a childhood friend, named Ilse Kleinzahler, helped get her moved to Landeshut, also a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, and to Landenshut, where she worked with looms again. When Landenshut was shut down in May 1944, Weismann Klein was moved to Grünberg.

Death March

Weissmann Klein was among 4000 women, including three friends with whom she had been in the camps, Ilse Kleinzahler, Liesl Steppe, and Suse Kunz, began a 350-mile death march to avoid the advance of the Allied forces. During the death march, according to Weissmann Klein's account, her friend, Ilse Kleinzahler, died in her sleep after telling her she wouldn't be going further.

The death march went through Dresden, Chemnitz, Zwickau, Reichenbach, Plauen, Germany, and on through Wallern (now Volary in modern-day Czech Republic), and Weissmann Klein was one of fewer than 120 women who survived exposure to the winter elements, starvation, and arbitrary execution.

Weissmann Klein attributed her survival during the death march to her father's instruction to wear her ski boots, which she kept on during the march, when it came time to leave home. Weissmann Klein's friends, Ilse Kleinzahler, Liesl Steppe, and Suse Kunz, are buried in a cemetery in Volary, Czech Republic with 92 prisoners who died on the death march.

Liberation

In May 1945, Weissmann Klein was liberated by forces of the United States Army in Volary, Czechoslovakia;[4] these forces included Lieutenant Kurt Klein,[5] who was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States to escape Nazism as a teenager in 1937. Klein's parents were murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

When Kurt Klein first encountered Gerda Weissmann, who was one day short of her 21st birthday, she was white-haired, weighed 68 pounds, dressed in rags, and had not bathed in three years. When she informed Klein that she was a Jew, he told her he was Jewish, as well. They were engaged in September 1945 and married in Paris.[6]

Life after the War

Gerda and Kurt Klein settled in Kenmore, New York and had three children and eight grandchildren. She became involved with several local and national charities and spoke about her experiences during the war.

The story of Gerda and Kurt's meeting and life together has been featured on Oprah, 60 Minutes, and CBS Sunday Morning. A book of their letters, The Hours After, a collection of correspondence between Gerda and Kurt Klein following the war, was published in 2011.

The documentary, One Survivor Remembers, (1995) based on Greda Klein's autobiography, All But My Life,[7] produced and directed by Kary Antholis, and distributed by HBO Films, won the 1995 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).[8]

Weissmann Klein has published several memoirs and children's stories, includingThe Windsor Caper (2013), a weekly serial in The Buffalo News during the 1980s, about two American girls who have a night-time adventure in Windsor Castle, England. Weissmann Klein describes it as her only work that is "not rooted in pain".

Awards and recognition

Presidential Medal of Freedom

On February 15, 2011, President Barack Obama presented Gerda Weissmann Klein and 14 other recipients with the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom.[9] At the ceremony in the East Room of the White House, President Obama announced, "This year's Medal of Freedom recipients reveal the best of who we are and who we aspire to be." He stated the following as Klein was presented with her Presidential Medal of Freedom:

By the time she was 21, Gerda Klein had spent six years living under Nazi rule — three of them in concentration camps. Her parents and brother had been taken away. Her best friend had died in her arms during a 350-mile death march. And she weighed only 68 pounds when she was found by American forces in an abandoned bicycle factory. But Gerda survived. She married the soldier who rescued her. And ever since — as an author, a historian and a crusader for tolerance — she has taught the world that it is often in our most hopeless moments that we discover the extent of our strength and the depth of our love.

President Obama then read a statement from Klein: "I pray you never stand at any crossroads in your own lives, but if you do, if the darkness seems so total, if you think there is no way out, remember, never ever give up."[10]

Additional Recognition

Klein was selected to be the keynote speaker at the United Nations' first annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2006.[11] She has spoken to school children and traveled the world to spread her message of tolerance and hope, meeting with world leaders. In 1996, Klein was one of five women to receive the international Lion of Judah award in Jerusalem. She has also been featured on the cover of the McDougal-Littell high school textbook, The Americans, with such other notable figures as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, and General Norman Schwarzkopf. She received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Daemen College in 1975.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed her to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Governing Council. In 2007, the museum bestowed Klein with its highest honor at The Arizona Biltmore before 1,000 guests.[12]

In May 2001, Chapman University awarded Kurt Klein and Gerda Weissmann Klein an honorary doctorate of humane letters, the only married couple to be so honored by the university. Klein has spoken at Chapman University multiple times, most recently in November 2011.

Legacy

In 2008, Klein co-founded Citizenship Counts, a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate students on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, inspire their pride in America, and encourage them to participate in community service, with her granddaughter, Alysa Cooper.

The vision of Citizenship Counts is to create a well-informed, responsible citizenry who are motivated to participate in local and national communities. Klein's wish is that this organization will give her an opportunity to give back and thank the United States for all that she has been given over the years since she became a naturalized citizen in 1948. She expressed her passion for the mission of Citizenship Counts:

America is a unique, diverse and wondrous country, comprised both of those who know its magnificence as their birthright, and others, like me, who are privileged to call our adopted country 'our own.' What we all share is a desire for our families to enjoy America's boundless opportunities while extending to all our fellow citizen's justice and the blessings and freedoms upon which the nation was founded.

To perpetuate the miracle that is America we must teach our children about its rich history as a nation of immigrants who chose this country and have given meaning to its ideals.

Citizenship Counts will engage today's students in civics education, combined with active participation in a naturalization ceremony, to help ensure that the citizens of tomorrow will continue to foster tolerance, understanding, service to one another, and a greater appreciation for the privilege and responsibility of citizenship.

Bibliography
  • 1957: All But My Life. New York: Hill & Wang, 1957, expanded edition 1995. ISBN 0809024608
  • 1974: The Blue Rose. Photographs by Norma Holt. New York: L. Hill, 1974. ISBN 0882080474
  • 1981: Promise of a New Spring: The Holocaust and Renewal. Illustrated by Vincent Tartaro. Chappaqua, N.Y.: Rossel Books, 1981. ISBN 0940646501
  • 1984: A Passion for Sharing: The Life of Edith Rosenwald Stern. Chappaqua, N.Y.: Rossel, 1984. ISBN 0940646153
  • 1986: Peregrinations: Adventures with the Green Parrot. Illustrations by Chabela. Buffalo, N.Y.: Josephine Goodyear Committee, 1986. ISBN 096166990X
  • 2000: The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in the War's Aftermath. Written with Kurt Klein. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. ISBN 0312242581
  • 2004: A Boring Evening at Home. Washington, D.C.: Leading Authorities Press, 2004. ISBN 0971007888
  • 2007: Wings of EPOH. Illustrated by Peter Reynolds. [S.l.]: FableVision Press, 2007. ISBN 1891405497
  • 2009: One Raspberry. Illustrated by Judy Hodge. Klein, 2009. ISBN 0615356230
  • 2013: The Windsor Caper. Illustrated by Tim Oliver. Martin Good, 2013. ISBN 9780956921352

Filmography

References
  1. Personal Histories: Gerda Weissmann Klein and Kurt Klein Archived 2006-08-05 at the Wayback Machine, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 2013-06-15.
  2. "Gerda Weissmannn". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. USHMM. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  3. Klein, Gerda Weissmann (1995). All But My Life (A new, expanded ed.). New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0809024608.
  4. Gerda Weissmann Klein's testimony at "THE DEATH MARCH TO VOLARY" - an exhibition at Yad Vashem website
  5. "Voices on Antisemitisim interview with Gerda Weissmann Klein". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 2006-12-07. Archived from the original on 2007-06-22.
  6. Klein, Gerda Weissmann (2000). The hours after : letters of love and longing in the war's aftermath (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312242581. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  7. Klein, Gerda Weissmann (1995). All But My Life (A new, expanded ed.). New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 0809015803. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  8. Klein, Gerda Weissmann. "One Survivor Remembers". IMDB. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
  9. "Gerda Klein: An Outstanding American by Choice". Department of Homeland security. DHS.
  10. White House Press Office, Remarks by the President Honoring the Recipients of the 2010 Medal of Freedom, February 15, 2011. Retrieved 2013-06-15.
  11. "Remembrance and Beyond". The Holocaust and United Nations Outreach Program. United Nations.
  12. "One Survivor Remembers". Shushterman Center for Jewish Studies. The University of Texas at Austin.
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