GERDA WEISSMANN KLEIN : ‘I Was the Lucky One’

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, HBO and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum present the poignant documentary “One Survivor Remembers,” premiering Sunday on HBO.

“One Survivor Remembers” is the first-person account of Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein. It is told through family photographs, archival film clips, recent footage from the locations described in the piece and recent interview footage of Klein and her husband, Kurt Klein.

Klein’s life changed forever when the Germans invaded her homeland of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. In 1940, her 19-year-old brother Arthur was the first in her family to be taken away. For the next two years, she and her mother and father were forced to live in the basement of their home in Bielsko, Poland.

On June 28, 1942, Klein’s father was taken away. The next day, her mother was led to a different group. Klein never saw her mother or father or brother again.

She was sent on a train to a labor camp where she became inseparable with a girl she met on the journey, Suse Kunz. They spent the next three years in camps along the border of Poland and Germany. In early 1945, Klein, Kunz and her two other close friends, Liesel Stepper and Ilse Kleinzaher, began a three-month death march with 2,000 other women from the northern Polish-German border to southern Czechoslovakia. After months of exposure, starvation and executions, only 150 survived. Klein believes she survived because her father had the foresight, back in 1942, to make her wear her ski boots.

Under American assault, the Germans abandoned the women in a factory in Volary, Czechoslovakia. Weighing only 68 pounds and one day short of her 21st birthday, Klein was discovered May 7, the day before Germany’s surrender was announced, by a young American soldier, Lt. Kurt Klein. He was a German-born Jew who had moved to the United States in 1937. They married a year after their first meeting and have three children and eight grandchildren.

A distinguished author, journalist, historian and lecturer, Klein has received honorary doctor of humane letters degrees from Daemen College in Buffalo, N.Y.; Our Lady of Holy Cross in New Orleans, La., and Carthage College in Kanosha, Wisc. She’s written five books. Her autobiography, “All but My Life” is in its 31st printing.

Times Staff Writer Susan King spoke with Klein, 70, over the phone from her home in Scottsdale, Ariz.

“One Survivor Remembers” gives you the opportunity to speak for all the victims of the Holocaust.

I was privileged to be singled out to speak on behalf of others. Of course, the privilege came with enormous responsibility. This is why I was a little afraid of it ... hoping that it would come through that I was the lucky one. I wanted mostly to talk about my friends and my family, obviously. But my friends were on the march and, tragically, some died just before liberation and on liberation day and a couple of days later. To have gone all through that and not have known the joy of freedom is very bitter.

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Do you think the memory of your friends and family helped you survive the Holocaust?

Absolutely. This is why I think for the first time I was totally lost on liberation day because I was alone. I lost my three best friends. My closest friend Ilse died the week before, Suse died on liberation morning and Liesel died a couple of days later.

Frequently, the idea of concentration camps ... people think of it as a snake pit where people stepped on each other. They didn’t see that there was kindness there and friendship and love and that was the sustaining part.

I hope that I can somehow convey that there is still a normalcy even under the most horrible circumstances. Even when somebody faces the death of somebody they love, they still have to get up in the morning and brush their hair to go out. It gives people some hope that one can cope.

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What do you feel when people say there has been too much done on the Holocaust and it’s time to move on?

I understand it to a certain degree. People want to go on with their lives. There’s so much violence and so much pain that people don’t want to expose themselves to it continuously. However, I feel this is the lesson of history. If we understand it, hopefully, we can prevent it from happening again. It’s, of course, an old cliche. But the one thing that I have always felt personally very sad about is, most of the time people immediately expect to see unrelieved horror (when dealing with the Holocaust). I think it’s important to know that even under those circumstances there was a certain nobility and caring and friendship. I think that many positive lessons can be learned because we live in an age when people are terribly afraid and say, “How would I ever cope with such and such?” I hope that somehow I can convey that one can and if something bad happens that we somehow have the resilience and strength to cope with a lot.

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Have you ever gone back to your hometown?

We went back to Czechoslovakia where I was liberated. I went with my husband, my children and many of my American friends. I did not go home, but my children, at that point unbeknown to me, did go. For me it was frightening. I didn’t want them to go back.

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Were you afraid something would happen to them?

Exactly. You are very understanding if you focused in on that. I didn’t realize that until it was all over. They told me they might, but they didn’t tell me. I begged them not to go. I was scared. But once they had been there, the fear was removed to know they could go in and come back. I think perhaps I might be able to go. I don’t think I will, but where 10 years ago I would have said never, I don’t say never now. I think the fact that my children had been there sort of finished something for me.

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How long after you were liberated by your future husband, did you come to America?

I was liberated on May 7, which is, incidentally, when the documentary airs. I was in the hospital for a few months (after liberation) and then I worked in Munich. My husband used to visit me as often as he could. When he got his orders to go home, he asked me to marry him, which was in September, 1945. I couldn’t get out of Germany then. It was a whole long story. But, ultimately, my husband did come back and we were married in Paris in June of ’46. He saved my life and he restored me to it all. I came to Buffalo in ’46. You can well imagine what it was like to come here. It was unbelievable. I couldn’t stop eating. I still haven’t stopped (laughs).

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Do you travel the country talking about the Holocaust?

I speak a lot on behalf of United Jewish Appeal and also to colleges and interface meetings and do a lot with kids on my book. They are wonderful. They are very sensitive and very understanding. I have talked about suicide in schools. Kids wrote to me and in those letters I found that so many kids have been flirting with suicide. They will say, “You know you had it so much tougher and you didn’t do that.” So this is when it occurred to me this is a subject to which I should address myself.

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You contemplated suicide once during your ordeal. Was it the promise you made to your father that you wouldn’t kill yourself that stopped you?

I use that when I talk to my kids: “Imagine what would have happened if I did. I would have never lived to see freedom. I would have never been in this country. I would never have had children or grandchildren.” I usually tell the kids if they have problems that seem insurmountable to them at that particular time to write down what their problem is, put it in a letter, seal it, put on it a date six months later and then open it and see how they feel about it. I am fortunate to be able to tell you that it has worked. I have been very privileged to have letters from kids in which they told me I saved their lives. It’s very rewarding.

“One Survivor Remembers” premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. on HBO; it will repeat May 12, 17, 20, 23 and 31.