Gerda Weissman Klein
AZ, US
Gerda Weissman Klein captiviates audiences with her powerful story about surviving the Holocaust.
Author, historian, and speaker, Gerda Weissman Klein has captivated audiences worldwide with her powerful story about surviving the Holocaust. Her uplifting presentations take audiences through one of the darkest eras of our world's history. In 1939, 15 year-old Gerda Weissman Klein's life would change forever as German troops invaded her home in Beilsko, Poland. She was cruelly separated from her parents and sent to a slave-labor camp. This day would be forever ingrained in Gerda's memory as it was the last time she would ever see her family again. Never losing hope, Klein would spend the next three years in a succession of slave-labor camps, until she was forced to walk in a 350-mile death march in which 2,000 women were subjected to exposure, starvation, and arbitrary execution. Despite such atrocities, Klein never lost the will to survive. Klein's account of living through the Holocaust is documented in her autobiography, All But My Life, which has attained the status of a classic. The book depicts her view of the dark years of the Holocaust and her eventual liberation from a death march by her future husband, Kurt Klein, an American intelligence officer. Her testimony is so compelling that All But My Life has become required reading in some school districts throughout the U.S. Gerda and her late husband are also the authors of The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath, based on actual correspondence between Gerda and Kurt Klein following the war. The Klein's story is portrayed in the film Testimony, a permanent exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1997, Klein was appointed to the council of the Holocaust Museum by President Clinton. The 1995 HBO documentary, One Survivor Remembers, in which Gerda Klein recounts some of her wartime experiences, won a TV Emmy Award, two Cable Ace Awards, and an Oscar. *Speakers represented through our partnership relationships with other agencies
Author, historian, and speaker, Gerda Weissman Klein has captivated audiences worldwide with her powerful story about surviving the Holocaust. Her uplifting presentations take audiences through one of the darkest eras of our world's history. In 1939, 15 year-old Gerda Weissman Klein's life would change forever as German troops invaded her home in Beilsko, Poland. She was cruelly separated from her parents and sent to a slave-labor camp. This day would be forever ingrained in Gerda's memory as it was the last time she would ever see her family again. Never losing hope, Klein would spend the next three years in a succession of slave-labor camps, until she was forced to walk in a 350-mile death march in which 2,000 women were subjected to exposure, starvation, and arbitrary execution. Despite such atrocities, Klein never lost the will to survive. Klein's account of living through the Holocaust is documented in her autobiography, All But My Life, which has attained the status of a classic. The book depicts her view of the dark years of the Holocaust and her eventual liberation from a death march by her future husband, Kurt Klein, an American intelligence officer. Her testimony is so compelling that All But My Life has become required reading in some school districts throughout the U.S. Gerda and her late husband are also the authors of The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath, based on actual correspondence between Gerda and Kurt Klein following the war. The Klein's story is portrayed in the film Testimony, a permanent exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In 1997, Klein was appointed to the council of the Holocaust Museum by President Clinton. The 1995 HBO documentary, One Survivor Remembers, in which Gerda Klein recounts some of her wartime experiences, won a TV Emmy Award, two Cable Ace Awards, and an Oscar. *Speakers represented through our partnership relationships with other agencies
2010