Klein, Gerda Weissmann, 1924-

Gerda Weissmann was born to Julius and Helene (Mueckenbrunn) Weissmann in Bielsko, Poland on May 28, 1924. She had one sibling, an older brother named Arthur (b. 1919). Prior to the German invasion of Poland, Gerda Weissmann attended Notre Dame Gymnasium in Bielsko. The German army entered Bielsko on September 3, 1939 and Arthur Weissmann was deported soon thereafter. The family received a few letters from him, but the correspondence soon stopped and Arthur was presumed murdered. The Weissmann family was then forced to move into their basement so the Aryan family who had been living there could live in the house. They were subsequently confined in the Bielsko ghetto, where both Julius and Helene Weissmann were killed prior to the ghetto's liquidation in 1942.

When the ghetto was liquidated, Gerda Weissmann was sent to a textile mill in Bolkenhain, Silesia. She was later confined in slave labor camps in Marzdorf, Landshut, and Gruenberg. When the camps were liquidated at the end of the war, Weissmann became part of a 350-mile death march. She and the march's other 120 survivors were liberated on May 7, 1945 in Volary, Czechoslovakia by a group of American soldiers including Kurt Klein (1920-2002). Klein, a German Jew from Waldorf, had been sent to the United States with his siblings (Max and Gerdi Klein) in 1937 when their parents (Ludwig and Alice Klein) felt that they were no longer safe in Germany. The Klein home was vandalized during Kristallnact and Kurt Klein's parents were deported to Eastern Europe. They were eventually killed in Auschwitz. Kurt Klein and Gerda Weissmann married in Paris on June 18, 1946.

Gerda and Kurt Klein settled in Kenmore, New York and had three children, Vivian E. (Klein) Ullman (b. 1948), Leslie A. (Klein) Simon (b. 1952), and James Arthur (b. 1957). Gerda Klein's first book, a memoir titled All But My Life, was published in 1957. She went on to write The Blue Rose (1974), Promise of a New Spring: The Holocaust and Renewal (1981), A Passion for Sharing (1984), and The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath (With Kurt Klein; 2000). Gerda Klein's life is also recorded in the documentary One Survivor Remembers . In addition to writing, Gerda and Kurt Klein have lectured extensively on the Holocaust and their relationship and formed the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation.

From the guide to the Gerda Weissmann and Kurt Klein Papers, 1940s-2011, 1940s-2001, (Arizona State University Libraries Special Collections)