Gerda Weissmann Klein
Gerda Weissmann Klein (F / Poland1924-)
- MEMOIRS : All But My Life (1957)
Biography
Born in 1924, Gerda Weissmann Klein is a Polish American writer and human rights activist. Her autobiographical account of the Holocaust, All but My Life, was adapted for the 1995 short film, One Survivor Remembers, which received an Academy Award and an Emmy Award, and was selected for the National Film Registry
Book All But My Life (1957)
"The experiences of a young Jewish girl in occupied Poland and Nazi concentration camps. When Gerda's father told her to wear her ski boots to the work camp in June, he could hardly know that they would help in her desperate fight for survival. Three years later, one of the two hundred slave girls remaining from the four thousand who were forced on a thousand-mile winter march, she took them off her frozen feet and extracted the family photographs which she had hidden in the soles. The Nazis had taken from her indeed all but her life. Every member of her family, every friend, died in the concentration camps. Gerda tells of many courageous people, lost now but for her story, and of her own unbelievable struggle, through the darkest hours of her people's history, to survive by hope alone. Despite incredible experiences, and the complete destruction of the world she knew and loved, she was able to begin a new life based on her compassion, love, and faith. In June 1946, a year after her liberation from the Nazis, Gerda Weissmann married Lt. Kurt Klein of the 5th U.S. Infantry Division. They moved to the United States and raised three children in Buffalo, New York. This is her story. -- Publisher description.