Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor and author who wrote about her ordeal and went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, will be remembered at a memorial May 1 after her death this month.
FILE - President Barack Obama presents Jewish Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann Klein, a 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom on Feb. 15, 2011, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor and author who wrote about her ordeal and went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, will be remembered at a memorial May 1 after her death in Phoenix earlier this month.
Klein died April 3 in Phoenix, where she had lived since 1985. She was 97. Her granddaughter Alysa Cooper confirmed the death but did not give a cause.She was a teenager when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and the family was forced to live in the basement of their home for three years. Klein's parents were later deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp and she never saw them or her brother again.
Klein spent the next three years in Nazi camps. She met her future husband, Army Lt. Kurt Klein, when American soldiers liberated her and others from an abandoned bicycle factory in Volary, Czechoslovakia, on May 7, 1945, the eve of her 21st birthday.Married in Paris on June 18, 1946, the couple started a new life in Buffalo, New York, and raised three children: Vivian, Leslie and James.
Klein described her wartime experiences in her memoir “All But My Life,” which has been widely used in high school and college curricula. President Bill Clinton appointed Klein to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council in 1997, and President Barack Obama awarded her with the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.In addition to her children, she is survived by eight grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren.Her family plans a virtual celebration of her life May 1 at noon PT. Details will be announced throughCopyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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Holocaust survivor, author Gerda Weissmann Klein dies at 97Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor and author who wrote about her ordeal and went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, will be remembered at a memorial May 1 after her death this month
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Holocaust Survivor, Author Gerda Weissmann Klein Dies at 97Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor and author who wrote about her ordeal and went on to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, will be remembered at a memorial May 1 after her death this month
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Holocaust survivor, author Gerda Weissmann Klein dies at 97Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor, author, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, died on April 3. She was 97. Klein was born May 8, 1924, in Bielsko, Poland, and was a teenager when the Nazis invaded the country.
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