Gerda Schild Haas (1922–2021) was raised in a religious Jewish family in Ansbach, Germany, where her father, Siegfried, was the kosher butcher. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the family began to experience antisemitic persecution. After Kristallnacht in November 1938, her family was forced out of their home and ordered to move to Munich. Gerda's father immigrated to the United States but was unable to arrange for the rest of his family to join him. Gerda moved to Berlin where she worked as a nurse in a Jewish hospital. In November 1941, Gerda’s mother, Paula, and her sister, Elfriede, were deported to Kovno (Kaunas) in German-occupied Lithuania. There, the women were shot at the Ninth Fort, a killing site. In May 1943, Gerda was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she became close friends with another young woman named Eva and worked as a nurse in a children’s home. In February 1945, Gerda and her Eva joined a rescue transport to Switzerland. She reunited with her father in the United States in April 1946.
In fact, in all of Germany you were either very religious or you weren't aware of your Jewishness at all--you were very, very Reform. Conservative Judaism had not been invented yet. [Laughing] So, yes, we were very religious and, um, interestingly enough, um, the...the..the religion was state supported. In other words, we always had to mark on, on taxes or on any forms--on birth certificates, wedding forms, or anything--our, our affiliation. It was always "Jewish" because the state paid for the upkeep of the synagogue. The state paid for the salary of the rabbi or the hazan [synagogue official; cantor] or the shohet [person licensed by rabbinic authority to slaughter animals for use as food in accordance with Jewish laws]. So, there was never a question that we were very Jewish, and everybody knew that and everybody, up to a certain point, respected it too.
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