Holocaust Survivor Gerda Weissman Klein Speaking on April 7

2005 marks the 60th anniversary that Allied troops liberated Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II. As the subject of the 1996 Academy-award winning documentary, One Survivor Remembers, Gerda Weissmann Klein–author, historian, human rights activities and speaker–never lost sight of hope and freedom, even during her darkest hours after Nazis separated her at age 16 from family and friends and forced her to work in slave labor camps.

On April 7, Klein will share her story of survival, along with her message of tolerance toward persity, as she speaks at Del Mar College as part of the Department of Mathematics and Physics’ observance of Math Awareness Month. Activities begin at noon in Richardson Auditorium, located on the East Campus at Ayers and Baldwin. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call the department’s main office at 698-1238.

Author of several books, Klein’s autobiography, All But My Life, tells her unforgettable story of how she survived the Nazis’ cruelty. The book has been in print for over 46 years with 55 editions.

September 3, 1939, marked a turning point in Klein’s life. On that sinister day, German troops invaded the 15-year-old’s home in present-day Beilsko, Poland, and forced her brother Arthur into slave labor. Over the course of three years, the Nazi invaders forced Klein and her parents, Julius and Helene Weissmann, to live in their own cellar and then in one room in a Jewish ghetto set up in Beilsko. In June 1942, Klein saw her parents for the last time. Both parents perished in the gas chambers. And, until early 1943, Klein knew of her brother’s survival in a slave labor camp in Russia from notes written on scraps of paper. However, she never learned how or where he died.

Klein’s own survival meant never giving up hope. Subjected to exposure, starvation and arbitrary execution, she was one of only 127 women out of 2,000 who survived a 350-mile death march from a labor camp in Germany to Czechoslovakia. Her future husband, Lieutenant Kurt Klein–a German-born Jew who fled from the Nazis in 1937 and became a U.S. intelligence officer–was among the first of the American troops to help liberate the young woman and other survivors. He, too, had lost his parents at the hands of the Nazis at Auschwitz.

The Kleins’ story is portrayed in the film Testimony, a permanent exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. In June 1997, Klein was appointed to the council of the Holocaust Museum by President Clinton. The 1995 HBO documentary, One Survivor Remembers, in which Gerda Klein recounts some of her wartime experiences, won a TV Emmy Award, two Cable Ace Awards and an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 1996, Klein was one of five women to receive the prestigious international Lion of Judah award in Jerusalem. More recently, she was featured on the cover of a McDougall-Littel educational textbook, The Americans, alongside such other notable figures as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan and General Norman Schwartzkopf.

Klein has authored other books, including The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War’s Aftermath, a book of actual correspondence between Gerda and Kurt Klein following the war; A Boring Evening at Home, a collection of uplifting stories and memories that emphasize the importance of friends, family and love; and Promise of a New Spring, which is devoted to teaching young children about the Holocaust.

Klein’s constant striving for the preservation of human rights and dignity has earned her seven Doctorates of Humane Letters, along with countless other awards. In 1998, along with her late husband, Klein founded the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation (www.kleinfoundation.org) to promote tolerance, lessen prejudice and encourage community service focused on local hunger relief.

Her television appearances include 60 Minutes, Oprah and CBS Sunday Morning. She and her late husband Kurt have three children and eight grandchildren.