Gerda Weissmann to Deliver KSC Holocaust Memorial Lecture

Gerda Weissmann’s life changed forever in 1939 when, at age 15, German troops invaded her home in Beilsko, Poland. Both Gerda and her brother, Arthur, were separated from their parents and sent to slave labor camps. Her resilience supported her through three successive years in slave-labor camps and a forced 350-mile death-march in which 2,000 women were subjected to exposure, starvation, and arbitrary execution. Throughout, she never lost the will to survive. In 1945, she was rescued at the point of starvation by her future husband, Kurt Klein, an American intelligence officer.

Weissmann has lectured throughout the country and has written several books, including her autobiography, All But My Life. A documentary about her experiences during the Holocaust, One Survivor Remembers, won an Academy Award in 1996. Another film that features her story is shown regularly at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She has appeared on _The Oprah Winfrey Show _and CBS Sunday Morning and was featured on _60 Minutes _and Nightline. On January 27, 2006, Gerda addressed the United Nations General Assembly on its first International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. Fourteen members of Gerda Klein’s family, including her parents and brother, were killed at Auschwitz.

For more information, call the Cohen Center at 8-2490.