Gerda Weissmann Klein

Gerda Weissmann was born in 1924 in a part of Poland that was part of the German empire before WWI. She had idyllic childhood with her parents and her older brother Arthur. Then in September of 1939 the Germans invaded Poland and Gerda could not do many of the things that she liked to do. Shortly after this her older brother Arthur got a summons to report to the nearest train station to be taken to a work camp. Except for a few letters he was never seen or heard from again. Gerda and her parents still lived in their house, but shortly after Arthurs departure they were forced to move into their basement and the "Aryans" living in the basement were able to move into the house. They lived in the basement for about a year and a half. During the time that the Weissmanns lived in the basement Gerda met a man that she liked named Abek. They dated for a while, but she did not want to marry him and he ended up dying in a concentration camp. After about a year and a half the Weissmanns were forced to move from their basement to a ghetto. They made do and it helped that Abek was still able to visit every day and Gerda was closer to her friends than she had been previously. During the time that they were in the ghetto Gerda and Mr. Weissmann worked. Mr. Weissmann worked digging ditches and Gerda worked in a clothing mill. After several months of this Mr. Weissmann was moved "to be closer to his work". After this he was never seen again. Several days after Mr. Weissmann's departure it was Mrs. Weissmann and Gerda's turn to leave. The day they left the ghetto Gerda and Mrs. Weissmann were forced to march to a field where the Nazi in charge asked them and everybody else how old they were. The older ones including Mrs. Weissmann were taken in a truck to be gassed. The younger ones were taken to a concentration camp. In the concentration camp Gerda went to she worked a loom to make parachutes for the Luftwaffe. After several months the concentration camp was liquidated and she and her friends were taken to another camp that also made parachutes for the Luftwaffe, but it was vastly different. At first at the next camp Gerda did the same thing she did at the previous camp, she watched the looms. One day not long after arriving a man came up to her and asked her if she was hungry. She did not know what to say. As it turned out he wanted her to sleep with him and then he would feed her. She said no, to which he told her that he would make her life a living hell. After that she was always picked for the flax detail during the day and coal detail during the night. At the next camp Gerda started out working the looms, but then she and another friend where asked to go around a weigh the boxes containing the parachute material. After several weeks of this some newcomers joined the camp. They had been on a death march that occurred near the end of the war and Gerda and her friends were joining it. The death march started in Germany in January of 1945 and ended in April of 1945 in Czecholsovokia. Of the 4000 or so girls that began the march only about 125 were liberated by the Americans. One of the American liberators was a German born Jew named Kurt Klein. After he and his team liberated the woman he would stop at the hospital the Gerda was in to check up on her. Soon they fell in love. They were married in around 1946-47 and moved to Western New York and started a family. Shortly after her arrival in the United States Gerda began to write her memories of the war in a book called All But My Life. Gerda and Kurt Klein spent many years in Western New York before moving to Arizonia. After moving Gerda updated her book All But My Life to include some details about her older life and what she found out about the death of her family. She and Kurt have also written a book containing the letters that they wrote to each other while they were dating.