Kurt Klein

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Kurt Klein (born July 2, 1920 in Walldorf (Baden) ; † April 19, 2002 in Guatemala ) was an American entrepreneur and author of German-Jewish origin . During the Second World War he was part of the Ritchie Boys .

family

Kurt Klein was the son of Ludwig and Alice Klein. He was the youngest of three siblings. His father ran a trade in agricultural products such as grain, hops and tobacco in Walldorf near Heidelberg . Kurt Klein attended secondary school , but had to leave it during the Nazi era . He worked as a printer until his emigration . His sister Irmgard fled to the USA in 1936 and settled in Buffalo , New York . She managed to get an affidavit for Kurt so that he could enter the country a year later. The first few years he lived in Buffalo with uncle, aunt and cousin. Kurt Klein found work in his job as a printer. he worked in this trade until his retirement. His brother Max fled to the USA in 1938. The siblings tried to get their parents to live, but they didn't succeed. Ludwig and Alice Klein were expelled from Germany in October 1940 in the course of the Wagner-Bürckel campaign and deported to the French Gurs camp; they were murdered in Auschwitz .

Life

Kurt Klein fled to the United States in 1937 . In 1942 he became an American soldier and trained at the Military Intelligence Training Center at Camp Ritchie , Maryland . Some of their graduates were employed as interpreters in small groups of six, the "Interogation of Prisoner Teams" (IPW Team). Kurt Klein's team was assigned to the 5th US Infantry Division ("Red Diamond"), which fought as part of the 3rd US Army under General George S. Patton on the European theater of war. Kurt Klein returned to Germany as an American soldier. In 1945 he had the rank of 1st Lieutenant .

On May 6 and 7, 1945 - just before the end of the war - his unit, the 2nd regiment of the 5th US Infantry Division, liberated Jewish prisoners on a death march in Volary in the Sudetenland , including Gerda Weissmann, whom he married in Paris in 1946. The couple settled in Buffalo. His wife worked as a writer under the name Gerda Weissmann-Klein . Both founded their own foundation, The Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation , in April 1998 , which campaigned for education about the Holocaust , human rights and education for tolerance .

In 1987, Kurt Klein learned that he had met Oskar Schindler during the war . In May 1945 Kurt Klein's team picked up a small group of Jewish concentration camp inmates. Among them was the Sudeten German Oskar Schindler, who also wore concentration camp inmate clothing . The group wanted to bring their former factory director, who fled from the Red Army , to safety in the American zone in Germany. Kurt Klein obtained ID without knowing who it was in reality. He accommodated the refugees in Lenora near Volary. After two days, a military ambulance drove the group to Passau in the American zone.

After the end of the war, Kurt Klein interrogated prisoners of war in Freising , including the SS- Obersturmbannführer and Hitler's driver Erich Kempka , who reported on Hitler's suicide and the subsequent cremation under his direction during his interrogation.

Honors

  • In 2001 Gerda Weissmann-Klein and Kurt Klein were the first couple to be awarded honorary doctorates from Chapman University.

Publications

  • with Gerda Weissmann-Klein: The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath . 2000 (english)

Film and theater

  • In the 1995 US 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.
  • In the US documentary About Face by Steven Karras from 2005, Jewish emigrants from Germany and Austria talk about their experiences as Allied soldiers in World War II. In addition to Henry Kissinger , Kurt Klein was also interviewed .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Little Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American soldier and writer of Jewish origin
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Walldorf (Baden)
DATE OF DEATH April 19, 2002
Place of death Guatemala