Then she heard a sound. Weighing only 68 pounds, her hair white with malnutrition, she walked slowly to the door. On the other side of a hill, she saw a vehicle approaching. As it got closer, she saw two men sitting in the front and on the hood the giant white star of the United States Army.
The jeep stopped and one of the men walked over to her. He asked if she spoke German. She nodded, then said, “We’re Jewish, you know.”
The man, healthy and firm and wearing sunglasses, was silent. Finally he said, “Me too.”
He asked her if he could speak to the other “ladies,” with a formal address in German Gerda hadn’t heard in nearly six years. Then he held the door open for her.
“That was the moment of humanity’s recovery,” she said.
The soldier’s name was Kurt Klein. He was born in Waldorf, Germany, but his parents had sent him to the United States in 1937. They had promised to follow, but only reached France before being captured by the Nazis. They both died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
When Gerda recovered, she and Kurt fell in love. They married in Paris in 1946 and settled in Buffalo, where he had lived before the war and where he later owned a printing business.
Mrs. Klein wrote a memoir, “All but My Life” (1957), and nine other books, many about her experience during the Holocaust.
After Kurt Klein retired, they moved to the Phoenix area. There they founded the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation, which promoted tolerance and Holocaust remembrance through education, as well as through a nearly non-stop speaking schedule by the Kleins.
