Gerda Weissmann Klein (1924-2022) was born on May 8, 1924 in Bielsko, Poland. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Gerda's brother, Arthur, and other Jewish men were ordered to report for forced labor. Eventually, Gerda and her parents learned that this had been a ruse. The men had actually been deported east in freight trains and forced across the border into Soviet occupied territory. In Bielsko, Nazi German authorities imposed anti-Jewish measures. Eventually, Gerda and her parents, Helene and Julius, were imprisoned in the Bielsko ghetto.
In June 1942, when the Germans liquidated the ghetto, Gerda was separated from her parents. She was sent to the Bolkenhain labor camp, where she was forced to work in a textile factory. From there, she was transferred to several other camps before being forced on a death march. American soldiers liberated her in early May 1945, in the Czech town of Volary. In 1946, she married Kurt Klein, one of her liberators. Klein was a German Jew who had immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1937. Gerda's parents and brother did not survive the Holocaust.
My mother decided that I'm going to have a party. And uh, I just had a wonderful thing, I just had a, another big birthday, my sixty-fifth. And a friend of mine who now lives in Detroit met my uh--husband and children gave me a party--she came to the party and she was in in Arizona now, and she was at that birthday party. The birthday party was rather grand because my mother had some oatmeal and she had made some wonderful cookies which we all swore were absolutely like uh tasted like uh nuts. And I had a birthday party which was crowned by an incredible thing. I got an orange. I always loved oranges. Only later did I find out that my mother had gone out of the ghetto, sold a diamond and pearl ring to get me an orange. That was the last birthday gift from my parents.
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