Ever since hearing the sad news of Gerda’s passing, I’ve found myself drawn, day after day, to one video after another of Gerda’s charismatic delivery of her personal, heart wrenching experiences so inhumane as to see me utterly mesmerized by the dynamic strength of character necessary for Vivian’s mother to stand and speak from podiums throughout the world while quietly describing the enslaved, starved, broken hearted young girl she had been, who, having been brutalized within unbearable captivity by the Nazis for years, had endured a freezing death march of 350 miles, over three excruciating months, that saw only 120 women (of the thousands who had literally been walked to death), survive so as to find herself herded roughly into an empty factory where Gerda had known that the Nazis had planned to blow up these skeletal inmates—however—
Rather than having been murdered in cold blood as had been true of her beloved family, friends and millions of Jewish families across Europe, my friend Vivian’s beloved mother had been liberated by rainfall (defusing the bomb), followed by the arrival of a jeep in which two American soldiers had jumped out, one of whom had been so handsome as to have looked god-like to Gerda, who, having been unwashed for more than three years, could not believe her eyes when he’d, literally, opened the door, separating slavery from freedom as he invited emaciated twenty year old Gerda to precede him as she, ever so slowly, made her way forward toward liberation and life, and as months passed in which Kurt Klein fell in love with this 69 pound survivor of the Holocaust (perpetrated upon innocent people by a maniacal mind that had convinced countless men, women and children that torturing, murdering and stealing the belongings of Jewish families had need be done for the good of the tall, blond, blue eyed master race—to which dark haired, dark eyed, small in stature Adolph Hitler did not belong) Gerda Weissmann Klein, having found solace within the safe haven of her beloved husband Kurt’s loving embrace, became an openly loving wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother and an American citizen while she’d developed into a remarkable woman of valor, renown for having courageously dedicated her life to liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness for all of mankind, throughout the world in hopes that inhumane treatment concerning the elimination of human beings based in the Nazi’s devilish evil systematic organization of genocide would never be repeated
Thank goodness I can write what I feel, for this reason—Feeling my mind swelling with a soul stirring reverential emotional reaction that proves so deeply heartfelt as to course throughout my entire body suggests that any attempt on my part to speak of Gerda’s harrowing experiences culminating in her courageous global leadership would render me speechless, for sure.
Had my grandparents (born and raised in Poland) not fled from pogroms (unprovoked mob attacks in which Jewish families were beaten, raped, killed and burned out), terrorizing my family’s shtetl (small town in which the Jewish population had been forced to live, most usually, in poverty), Gerda’s descriptions of murder, slavery. systematic starvation, death marches and the horrors of day to day survival in concentration camps scattered throughout Europe, could have been my own.
I remember feeling spellbound, my attention held utterly rapt, while listening to both of my grandmas relating the hellish personal stories of their youth. As young mothers, they’d hidden with their terrified children in the bushes whenever the Cossacks, literally on horseback, galloped through the shtetl, crashing through their front doors, ransacking their meager belongings, followed by torching their homes for nothing other than mean minded pleasure derived from a sick sense of self empowerment over the downtrodden.
I remember my sense of horror upon hearing of my grandma’s kindhearted neighbor, who, while hiding her family in the bushes with my grandma’s family, had placed her hand over her crying child’s mouth only to find that once the rampage was over, her beloved child, whose terrified sobs had been stifled, had smothered and died in her deeply shocked, desperately bereaved mother’s lap.
Stories detailing my grandparents’ travails and tribulations. both in Europe and as penniless immigrants, newly arrived via steerage within the bowels of ocean-going, merchant vessels bound for the USA, can be found in posts penned early on within my blog.
Thank goodness, my inquisitive young mind had thought to ask my grandmas many questions, which saw my grandparents responses reaching into their memory banks so as to withdraw personal experiences so shocking as to have saddened the heart of the child at their knee (that would be me) immeasurably and thus, indelibly.
Thank goodness, my mother’s parents and my father’s parents had chosen to flee to The United States years before Hitler’s rise to power, as antisemitism proves as old as the historical timeline is long.
Just today, I learned that, during recent years, my sister-in-law, Marian, had been the speech pathologist, who’d worked with several of Gerda’s great-grandsons in one of the states that borders my own. Suggesting, yet again—It’s a small, small world, after all—and that’s especially true whenever Jewish geography comes into play.
👩🏻❤️Annie
