THIS REMARKABLE WOMAN OF VALOR WILL BE SADLY MISSED

 The day before yesterday—Wednesday morning to be exact—I had been saddened to learn of the passing of renown humanitarian, Gerda Weissmann Klein, who’d lived to enrich the world with her presence for 97 years, and here is the letter that my heart wrote to her daughter and son-in-law, dear friends of ours for more than 46 years—

Dear Vivian and Jim,

When we heard that your beloved mother had passed, our hearts felt heavy, knowing that your sense of personal loss would be twofold as your mother had inspired a heartfelt sense of hope, imagination and optimism to ignite within your family as well as within the lives of millions of people throughout the world.

I believe that the moment your mother passed from this world into the great unknown, her beloved Kurt (whose loving attentiveness she had missed ever so deeply since your beloved father’s death) welcomed your mother to nestle as safely within his loving embrace as had been true ever since he was one of the young American soldiers, who had liberated the inmates of the concentration camp in which your emaciated , 20 year old mother had somehow managed to survive.

I am always wondrous about the fact that having experienced the miracle of liberation and Kurt's love, your mother’s strength of spirit had felt compelled to gift the world with voicing her harrowing experiences of survival in such an inclusive way as to have tenderly inspired many millions to re-ignite their heartfelt connection to hope and loving kindness for the good of humanity, no matter how desperate their plight, as none of us knows what miracle tomorrow may bring.

Gerda, who we knew as your beloved mother (and Will’s patient), was truly a living, breathing icon, whose loving, hopeful spirit will continue to guide humanity to believe that beyond our darkest days awaits a bright new dawning in which our far-fetched dreams can be realized as had come true for a young girl, who had been one of the few (of thousands) who had survived the Nazi’s 350 mile death march, though her entire family had perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  And yet, upon being liberated by a handsome young soldier, your mother, Gerda Weissmann, who'd been grievously starved and brutalized for years, had maintained a hopeful heart, embodying personal strengths to fall in love, raise her beloved children, pen her memoirs (All But My Life and more) followed by working with Steven Spielberg (their documentary of her life winning an academy award and an Emmy) as well as being selected (during Obama’s administration) as a recipient of The Presidential Medal of Freedom.  And I’m sure there are many more commendations of which I am unaware.  All within one lifetime.  All of which you know so well.  All being utterly incredible for me to conceive.

And now that your beloved family has had to part with your precious mother, my words, though heartfelt, cannot do justice to the magnificence of the legacy left by both of your parents’ strong spirits, though each time I’d absorbed your mother’s soft spoken words of hope for the future of mankind, I can attest to the fact that not an eye was dry throughout her audience, her capacity to relate personal experiences had been so deeply moving as to have inspired each of us to feel as if her enslaved survival within the camps followed by liberation and a lifetime of love could have been our own.

Throughout these past three years, my serious illness has separated us from most of our friends, suggesting that we four are, once again, over due to enjoy dinner, together.  And so, with thoughts of these many years of our friendship, it is our ‘hope’ to meet with both of you on the patio of a favorite restaurant, sometime soon.

 

And with hopes that you can truly feel all of the love, admiration and respect that we’re sending—

Here we see four generations of women, whose strong-spirited love of life, liberty, family, happiness and humanity could not be extinguished by the brutality of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ to rid the world of loving Jewish families.

I see your mom, Gerda Weissmann Klein on the left.  I see my dear friend’s vibrant smile on the far right.  And sitting between mother and daughter, I see one of your lovely daughters and her adorable daughter, one of your mom’s many great-grandchildren.

The captivating nature of this photo, capturing the sparkling vibrancy of all four of you, commemorates our classic, universal, timeless dedication to GOOD WINNING over evil, REPEATEDLY, throughout history, beginning with human life on Earth up to and inclusive of this very day.

Every thought conveyed,  above, reverberates through my heart as though a series of snapshots flashes before my eyes whenever your beloved mother comes to mind, because, being a woman of valor, she, though a Holocaust survivor, chose to enjoy a truly fruitful, remarkable life, resulting in the fact that all of her beloved children continue to thrive.

❤️Annie and Will