Gerda Weissmann Klein was born in Bielsko, Poland, in 1924, and now lives in Arizona with her husband, Kurt
Klein, who as a U.S. Army lieutenant liberated Weissmann on May 7, 1945. The author of five books, she has received
many awards and honorary degrees and has lectured throughout the country for the past forty-five years. Kurt and
Gerda are the authors of The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath, published by St. Martin's
Press. One Survivor Remembers (a production of Home Box Office and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum),
winner of an Emmy Award and the Academy Award for documentary short subject, was based on All But My Life.
Review
"Soul searching and human . . . A moving personal testament to courage."
--Herbert Mitgang, The New York Times
"An unforgettable reading experience . . . All But My Life is one of the most beautifully written human documents
I have ever read. In this respect it is as sensitive and 'disturbing' a story as is The Diary of Anne Frank."
--Library Journal
"Gerda Weissmann Klein moves you, and not just because the story she can tell is so horrific. It is the passion
with which she looked through the horror and found a heart-felt and basic goodness in humanity . . . All But My
Life is filled with wonderful acts of decency and normalcy, even as she describes three years in labor camps and
three months of a forced winter march from Germany to Czechoslovakia."
--Royal Ford, The Boston Globe
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux Web Site, May, 2002
Summary
All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty.
From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation
by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda
takes the reader on a terrifying journey.
Gerda's serene and idyllic childhood is shattered when Nazis march into Poland on September 3, 1939. Although the
Weissmanns were permitted to live for a while in the basement of their home, they were eventually separated and
sent to German labor camps. Over the next few years Gerda experienced the slow, inexorable stripping away of "all
but her life." By the end of the war she had lost her parents, brother, home, possessions, and community;
even the dear friends she made in the labor camps, with whom she had shared so many hardships, were dead.
Despite her horrifying experiences, Klein conveys great strength of spirit and faith in humanity. In the darkness
of the camps, Gerda and her young friends manage to create a community of friendship and love. Although stripped
of the essence of life, they were able to survive the barbarity of their captors. Gerda's beautifully written story
gives an invaluable message to everyone. It introduces them to last century's terrible history of devastation and
prejudice, yet offers them hope that the effects of hatred can be overcome.
