Gerda Weissmann-Klein

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Gerda Weissmann-Klein

Gerda Weissmann-Klein (born May 8, 1924 in Bielitz , Poland ) is a Holocaust survivor, human rights activist and author. In addition to autobiographical works, she also wrote several books for children and young people. Together with her husband Kurt Klein (born July 2, 1920 in Walldorf (Baden) , † April 19, 2002 in Guatemala ) she campaigned for education about the Holocaust , human rights and education for tolerance . To this end, the couple set up their own foundation, The Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation . In 2008 Gerda Weissmann-Klein and her granddaughter Alysa Cooper founded the non-profit organization Citizenship Counts to promote and organize the ceremony for naturalization .

Life

youth

Gerda Weissmann-Klein is the daughter of Julius Weissmann and Helene Mueckenbrunn. Her mother tongue was German. She first attended a public school and later the Catholic girls' high school Notre Dame in Bielsko. Her older brother Arthur was deported on October 18, 1939, a few weeks after the German invasion of Poland. He was able to flee to Kiev and is missing. On April 19, 1942, around 250 Jews in Bielsko received the order to move into empty, dilapidated houses at the local freight station. The Bielsko ghetto was created . In June 1942, her father was deported to the Sucha labor camp . He was murdered. Days later the ghetto was dissolved and mother and daughter were separated. Her mother was probably deported directly to the nearby Auschwitz concentration camp and murdered.

The labor camps

Gerda Weissmann-Klein was deported to a Dulag, a transit camp in Sosnowitz . It was relocated on July 2, 1942. From then on she was sent to various satellite camps of the Groß-Rosen concentration camp . First she was transferred to Bolkenhain for forced labor in the weaving mill " Kramsta -Meschner & Frahne AG", whose director had chosen the forced laborers in Sosnowitz. In his factory the conditions were most bearable. The guard Ms. Kügler behaved humanely towards her prisoners. In August 1943 Gerda Weissmann was transferred to an old textile factory in Merzdorf with a group of 30 girls . The guard there immediately hit the newly arriving inmates with a whip. Around 100 women were imprisoned in the camp, which was guarded by the SS. Gerda Weissmann had to unload freight trains that brought flax and coal. The conditions in Merzdorf were terrible. One day the factory director of the Bolkenhain weaving mill appeared to bring Gerda Weissmann and her friend Ilse Kleinzähler to his branch in Landeshut ( Kamienna Góra ). On May 8 and 9, 1944, the camp there was closed and the forced laborers were deported to a textile factory in Grünberg . A thousand women were imprisoned there. Gerda Weissmann had to work in a spinning mill.

Death march

In January 1945 the camp was disbanded and the women were sent on a death march . In addition to the female prisoners from Grünberg, another 3,000 came from other camps and were divided into two groups of 2,000 each. The march of Gerda Weissmann's group began on January 29, 1945. The prisoners, some of them barefoot, had to march on foot along the partly snow-covered paths and streets, guarded and driven by the SS. The death march initially led to the Christianstadt camp . After a three-day stay, they had to continue marching. The route led via Dresden , Freiberg , Chemnitz , Zwickau , Reichenbach , Plauen to a camp in Helmbrechts , Bavaria, where they arrived on March 20, 1945 after almost 500 kilometers. On April 13, the last leg of the death march began. The prisoners were driven towards the Sudetenland .

liberation

Her friend Ilse Kleinzähler, with whom she had been together since Bolkenhain, died of exhaustion and hunger on the way. Three evenings later the group reached today's Czech city of Volary . Only 120 women from Gerda Weissmann's group, which originally consisted of around 2000 women, survived the march.

The inmates were driven into an empty factory hall. The SS fled, but beforehand laid an explosive device with a time fuse in the building. The women learned from the Czechs that the war was over. The area had been captured by the Third US Army under General George S. Patton . The German mayor now led an American reconnaissance team, consisting of 2 men, to the prisoners. They promised help. The next day another jeep with two American soldiers turned up. It was May 7, 1945, one day before Gerda Weissmann's birthday.

The concentration camp prisoner who was the first to be approached by one of the two American soldiers was Gerda Weissmann. She led her liberators into the building with her comrades. One of the soldiers opened the door for Gerda Weissmann. She remembered this polite gesture for a lifetime as a sign of humanity that she had missed for years. She introduced him to the completely exhausted concentration camp inmates with a wide wave of her arm. To the soldier's surprise, she quoted the German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Man is noble, helpful and good! This impressed the soldier, Lieutenant Kurt Klein, very much. He was a Jewish emigrant from Walldorf (Baden) . In 1937 he fled to the USA and entered the US Army in 1942. As a so-called Ritchie Boy , he received special training in intelligence . He had been assigned to the 2nd Regiment of the 5th US Infantry Division. Here he was part of one of the two-man teams that were used as scouts .

Kurt Klein took the sick and emaciated Gerda Weissmann to a hospital, she had become white-haired during her time in the concentration camp and weighed only 68 pounds (31 kilograms).

On May 11, 1945, German civilians were forced by the US military to walk past victims of a death march in Volary

On April 11, 1945, American soldiers discovered a mass grave with around 90 bodies of prisoners from the death march in Volary. They had to exhume civilians of Sudeten German origin. The dead were laid out and the local people were brought in to look at them. In a dignified ceremony, led by the rabbi of the 5th US Infantry Division, Herman Dicker, the murdered were buried in individual graves.

After two weeks, Kurt Klein was transferred to the Bavarian parish church , 20 km away , but visited Gerda as often as possible. Both started a friendship. She recovered and recovered over the next several months. When the American army withdrew to Bavaria and the Soviets moved in, Kurt Klein urged Gerda Weissmann to come to him in Munich, where he got her a job with the American occupation authorities.

After 1945

September 1945 the two got engaged. In October 1945 he returned to the USA on the transport ship Sea fiddler . The two married on June 18, 1946 in Paris. The couple settled in Buffalo , New York in September 1946 , the last they lived in Scottsdale , Arizona . They had two daughters and a son and eight grandchildren. Gerda Weissmann-Klein wrote the weekly Stories for Young Readers column for the Buffalo Sunday News from 1978 to 1996 .

Gerda Weissmann-Klein began writing her book Nothing but Bare Life under the direct impression of events. She published her life story in 1957. 66 editions had appeared by 2015. The book is considered a classic of Holocaust literature in the USA . It is almost as well known there as Anne Frank's diary . In Germany, however, the book and its author Gerda Weissmann-Klein are almost unknown. A German edition was first published in 1999 by Bleicher Verlag , Gerlingen .

Her book was the basis for the 1995 film One Survivor Remembers by the American director Kary Antholis, which was awarded an Emmy and an Oscar for best documentary film. Gerda Weissmann-Klein gave a speech at the Oscar ceremony. In 2012, the film was listed in the National Film Registry of the National Library Library of Congress as being particularly worth preserving .

In 2006 she spoke at the UN on the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust .

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum presents her life in its permanent exhibition.

Publications

English editions

German editions

  • Nothing but bare life . From the American by Anna Kaiser. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 2001.

TV appearances

Gerda Klein was a guest on the Winfrey Oprah Show , CBS Sunday Morning and in 60 Minutes . After the rampage at Columbine High School 1, Gerda Weissmann-Klein worked with the students on the events in a program on Nightline broadcast .

Honors

  • In 1974 Gerda Weissmann-Klein received the Hannah Solomon Award from the National Council of Jewish Women.
  • In 1985, the Zionist women's organization Hadassah presented her with the Myrtle Award.
  • In 1996 she was awarded the Lion of Judah award in Jerusalem, Israel .
  • In 2001 Gerda Weissmann-Klein and Kurt Klein were the first couple to be awarded honorary doctorates from Chapman University.
  • On February 15, 2011, President Barack Obama honored Gerda Weissmann-Klein with the Freedom Medal , one of the two highest civil awards in the USA. Incidentally, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel also received this award on the same day .
  • In 2012 Gerda Weissmann-Klein was honored with the Ellis Island Medal of Honor .

Film and theater

  • In the 1995 documentary One Survivor Remembers , Gerda Weismann and Kurt Klein report on their lives.
  • The play Gerda's Lieutenant , written by Ellen Gordon Reeves and Bennett Singer, was staged in 2009 by director Leigh Fondakowski, who also worked on the theater project The Laramie Project . The basis was the love letters from the book The Hours After . Gerda Weissmann was played by Lynn Cohen and Kurt Klein by Lynn Cohen's husband Ron Cohen.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Weissmann-Klein, Gerda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Klein, Gerda
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American Holocaust survivor, author
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielitz