“I pray you never stand at any crossroads in your own lives, but if you do, if the darkness seems so total, if you think there is no way out, remember, never ever give up. The darker the night, the brighter the dawn, and when it gets really, really dark, this is when one sees the true brilliance of the stars.” These words illustrate the courage and inner strength that made it possible for Gerda Weissmann Klein to endure the horrifying conditions of the Holocaust.

Gerda Weissmann, the second child of Julius Weissmann (fur manufacturing executive) and Helene Mueckenbrunn Weissmann (housewife), was born on May 8, 1924, in Bielsko, Poland. She attended Notre Dame Gymnasium in Bielsko until the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Both of her parents, as well as her older brother Arthur (b. 1919), died during the Holocaust. Miraculously, Gerda survived the ghetto, deportation, slave-labor camps, and the infamous three-month death march from the Polish-German border to southern Czechoslovakia. As the sole survivor of her family, she has provided the world a glimpse of her ordeal through her written and oral testimonies.

In 1946, Gerda Weissmann married her liberator, Kurt Klein (1920–2002), an American intelligence officer, in Paris. After their marriage, they traveled to the United States, where Kurt Klein owned a printing business and was an editor. Kurt Klein, a German Jew, had been sent to the United States in 1937 as a safety measure, and later he served in the armed forces. His parents remained in Germany and died in Auschwitz. The Kleins have three children: Vivian E. (b. 1948), Leslie A. (b. 1952), and James Arthur (b. 1957).

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Due to her charisma and her undeniable abilities as an author, historian, and columnist, Klein became an internationally recognized motivational speaker. She has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS Sunday Morning Show, and 60 Minutes. In 1999, she and her husband appeared on a Nightline episode focusing on her visit to Columbine High School. Eleven months after the shootings there, Klein had visited the parents, teachers and students of the Littleton, Colorado school, who felt her story of survival to be an inspiration for their own.

In 1997, Klein received an appointment to the United States Holocaust Commission by President Clinton. In 1998, the Kleins founded the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation to promote education, teach tolerance, lessen prejudice and encourage community service. In 2011, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama. Throughout her life, Klein has been an inspiration. Her response to the Holocaust, her devotion to her family, her work with all types of children, her commitment to the American Jewish community and Israel, her active support for the war against hunger, racism, and intolerance, and her prolific writing and lecturing are all examples of her dynamic role as an American Jewish woman in the twentieth century. Her life exemplifies the ability to overcome adversity by striving to link a fractured past with the future of American Judaism.

All But My Life (1957).

A Boring Evening at Home (2004).

The Blue Rose (1974).

The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War’s Aftermath, with Kurt Klein (2000).

A Passion for Sharing (1984).

Promise of a New Spring: The Holocaust and Renewal (1981).