Holocaust survivor story to be webcast
for public
November 8, 2007
Brendan Kachel
Online editor
In 1939, Gerda Weissman-Klein lived in Beilsko,
Poland. That is, until German troops invaded her hometown. She
never saw her family again and spent the next three years in
inforced labor camps, culminating in a 350-mile death march
with 2,000 other women.
Now, as part of International Education Week, Seward
County Community College will present Klein via a live web broadcast
at 6 p.m. Nov. 13 in the Showcase Theater. The presentation
is open to the public and presented free of charge and will
relate Klein's experience as a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
When Klein was 15, Nazi Germany took over Poland.
Klein's uncle sent the family a telegram warning them to leave,
but Klein's father had recently suffered a heart attack, making
leaving impossible. In 1939, Klein's older brother Arthor was
required to register with the German army. He was the first
member of her family that Klein would never see again.
Eventually, the rest of the family would be forced
first into a Jewish ghetto, then into camps. Klein's parents
were sent to Auschwitz, from which they never returned, while
she was sent to a varitey of camps, including Dulag, Sosnowitz,
Bolkenhain, Marzdorf, Landshut and Gruenberg. This went on from
1942 to 1945, culminating in a death march to avoid advancing
Allied forces. The majority of the 2,000 women on the march
did not survive.
Klein was finally liberated in May of 1945 by the
U.S. Army in Volary, Czechoslovakia. She weighed only 68 pounds.
During recuperation, she met her future husband, Kurt Klein,
a soldier in the U.S. Army, and another orphan due to Auschwitz.
He immigrated to the U.S. to escape the German Nazis, but his
parents had not.
The two married and moved to New York, where they
had three children.
Klein wrote the autobiographical "All But
My Life," which would eventually inspire the documentary,
"One Survivor Remembers," that would win an Oscar.
Additional information about this author, historian
and speaker may be found online at magpi.net.
In other International Education Week activities,
SCCC will host a flag ceremony at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday in the
student union. International students will be recognized and
their homeland flags hung in the union.
Additionally, several SCCC groups will have booths
at an International Fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at
the Seward County Activity Center.
