Gerda Weissmann Klein lived a life of unimaginable sadness, loss, and misery, yet paradoxically, one of soaring hope, happiness, and achievement. Gerda, a Polish Jew, somehow survived the Holocaust, was rescued by a Buffalonian, found refuge in Kenmore and dedicated her long, productive life to teaching the world about human rights so that the Shoah would never happen again.
Gerda Weissmann was 15 years old when her world started coming apart. The Germans overran her hometown of Bielsko, Poland, in 1939, as her non-Jewish neighbors turned out to welcome them with swastika flags. Soon all the Jews, about 20% of the city’s total population, were forced into a tiny ghetto, including Gerda and her family, who were assigned to live in a basement. Her only sibling, her older brother, was taken away, never to be heard from again. In 1942, her father was sent to a death camp and murdered. Two months later, the ghetto was liquidated, and all the Jews were marched in two lines to the center of town to be loaded onto trucks. Gerda, in a different line than her mother’s line, which consisted of older adults and small children, tried to rejoin her. But the head of the local Jewish Council put her back into her original line with other young adults, telling her, “You’re too young to die”. That was the last time she ever saw her mother.
Gerda spent the next three years in various labor camps, always on the verge of death. At one point she got hold of a dose of poison, but ultimately decided against committing suicide. In January 1945, Gerda and her fellow prisoners at the Schlesiersee women’s labor camp in Western Poland detected a sense of urgency among their captors—the Soviets were approaching. On Jan. 20, Gerda was among about 1,000 female prisoners sent on a forced march to the southwest. As they passed other camps and picked up more prisoners in the depths of winter, it quickly became a death march. Gerda was herself deathly ill, but she persevered, partly because she still wore the ski boots her father had demanded she hold onto at all costs back in 1939.
By May 5, they had walked 350 miles (some sources say 550 miles), to Volary, Czechoslovakia. Only about 200 of the 1,300 women on the march were still alive, including Gerda and two of her close friends. Their Nazi guards locked them in an abandoned factory and fled, but not before setting explosive devices meant to kill all the women inside. Fortunately, a steady rain ruined the timer and the explosives never detonated.
On May 7, Gerda heard a car approaching, and saw painted on its hood not a swastika, but a star. One of the GI’s in the car, a young lieutenant, got out and approached Gerda, asking if she spoke German or English. She answered in German, “We are Jewish, you know.” The American soldier paused for a long time, then answered, “So am I.”
He was Kurt Klein, whose German Jewish family sent him to Buffalo in 1937, at age 16, to escape the Nazis. His mother and father did not make it out; they were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Kurt treated Gerda with a courtesy that amazed her, after having been treated as subhuman for so long. He followed her inside the factory and showed him the other survivors. Her friends were too far gone—they died soon after. The rest were sent to hospital… including Gerda, who weighed just 68 pounds.
SEE Gerda Weissmann Klein and Kurt Klein talk about their first meeting, here.
Kurt visited her often as she recovered, and asked her to marry him. She gladly accepted. “To see someone who fought for our freedom, for our ideals,” she said many years later, “he looked like a god to me.” They were wed in Paris and returned to Kenmore, where they lived on E. Hazeltine Avenue, raised three children and became active congregants at Temple Beth Zion. Kurt, a printer, was president and owner of Kiesling-Klein Printing Co. Gerda wrote a column in the Buffalo News for young readers.
As a sixth birthday present for a developmentally disabled girl who lived across the street, Gerda wrote a story for her called “The Blue Rose”. It became a book that was translated into 20 languages and gave rise to the Blue Rose Foundation, a nonprofit agency that provides opportunities for the disabled. The book was also adapted as a play, and Gerda often spoke with the actors at many productions.
In 1985, when Kurt retired, the couple moved to the Phoenix area to be near their grandchildren. There they founded the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation, which promoted tolerance and Holocaust remembrance through education. They embarked on a rigorous speaking schedule that took them all over North and South America, Europe and Africa. They appeared in documentaries on PBS, CBS and HBO. One, "A Survivor Remembers," won the 1995 Academy Award for best short subject documentary. “Since the blessed day of my liberation I have asked the question, Why am I here?” she told the audience in her acceptance speech. “In my mind's eye I see those years and days and those who never lived to see the magic of a boring evening at home. On their behalf I wish to thank you for honoring their memory.”
After Kurt died in 2002. Gerda continued her work, which included frequent visits to Buffalo. In 2006 the United Nations made her the keynote speaker at the first Holocaust Remembrance Day, and in 2011, at the age of 86, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. He spoke of all she went through during the war, then added:
“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.”
Gerda Weismann Klein died in Phoenix in 2022 at the age of 97. The Nazis had tried to end her life and erase her from the memory of the world. Each day she lived was a repudiation of their evil, and an affirmation of everything she believed in education, tolerance, civic engagement and the preservation of human rights.
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PRODUCTION NOTES: Both actors in this episode knew Gerda Weismann Klein personally. Darleen Pickering Hummert knew her from her work on the theatrical adaptation of The Blue Rose. Mark Horowitz knew her through his work as an executive at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Buffalo. For a better understanding of this remarkable woman, see her obituaries in The New York Times and The Buffalo News.
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Cast (in order of appearance):
Gerda Weissmann: Darleen Pickering Hummert
Kurt Klein: Mark Horowitz
Narrator: Susan Banks
Sound recording: Aaron Heverin
Sound editing: Micheal Peters
Piano theme: Excerpt from “Buffalo City Guards Parade March,” by Francis Johnson (1839)
Performed by Aaron Dai
Produced by the Niagara Frontier Heritage Project
Written by Jeff Z. Klein
Associate producer: Karl-Eric Reif
Special thanks to:
Kathryn Larsen, vice president, content distribution, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
S.J. Velasquez, director of audio strategy, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Jerry Urban, senior radio broadcast engineer, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Council Member Mitchell P. Nowakowski and the City of Buffalo for their generous support.
Written by Jeff Z. Klein (Niagara Frontier Heritage Project)