'You are the spiritual heirs,' Holocaust survivor tells crowd
A packed crowd at North Shore Congregation Israel listened on May 29 to Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor and author who has lived to tell her story of captivity, freedom, and hope.
Klein's talk, attracting more than 700 people Thursday night, was one piece of a three-part speaker series commemorating the 15th anniversary of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
(Jeff Krage/for Pioneer Press)
Klein, 84, has written five books including "One Survivor Remembers," which was made into a movie and won an Academy Award in 1995.
Her story begins when she was 15 years old in 1939 when the Nazis had taken Poland and sent her parents to Auschwitz.
They sold her and a childhood friend on the slave market in Germany. It began a string of moves to various work camps.
Klein lost her entire family during the Holocaust.
"I feel that the true understanding of the people in the camps has never been completely illuminated," she told the crowd. "Those who perished left no children. You are the spiritual heirs and know of the greatness of the legacy that was left to you. This is why I always want to tell the story."
As a prisoner, Klein was part of a 350-mile death march in which Nazis attempted to avoid the advance of Allied forces. In May, 1945, it ended in Volary, Czechoslovakia.
"Our captors locked us into an empty bicycle factory and attached a time bomb. I remember our hopes and prayers, but also the certainty of death. Suddenly it started to rain and the torrential rains and mud prevented the bomb and timer from collecting and it didn't go off," she said. "At dawn the door opened and people were calling out 'the war is over.'"
On Liberation Day, Klein was one of 120 survivors there. Two thousand women had died.
"What do you feel during such a moment?" She asked the crowd rhetorically.
"I remember no feeling at all. I don't know if God in his wisdom created an emotion for it.
"I remember standing in the doorway of the factory, coming down the gentle hill. It was a white star of the American Army. Two men sat in the vehicle, one jumped out and came running towards me," she said. "I looked at him and said: 'We are Jewish,' and he said 'so am I.'
"This was the greatest moment of my life: To be liberated not only by an American but by a Jew."
The soldier asked to see the other women and as Klein led him, he held the door for her. Despite wearing rags, weighing 68 pounds, and no bathing in three years, "he restored me to humanity again," she said.
She married that soldier, Kurt Klein, three years later in Paris and they settled in Buffalo, New York.
"The pain must not be wasted. It can be used to heal if you reach out to someone who is in pain and share. You will not only assuage their pain but your own as well."