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May 3, 2002/Iyar 21, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 33
Klein spread message of hope
BARRY COHEN
Editor
Kurt Klein met his wife in the aftermath of humanity's darkest chapter: the Shoah.
At the end of the war, he helped liberate a group of women who had endured a 350-mile death march. Gerda Weissmann, barely 21, was among them. She was emaciated, weighing only 68 pounds, her hair matted and gray. Dressed only in rags, she had not bathed in three years.
Yet, Klein was able to see through her appearance and perceive her humanity.
They began writing letters to each other. This correspondence, documented in "The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War's Aftermath" (St. Martin's Press, $23.95, hardcover), continued for more than a year, from their chance encounter at the German-Czech border in May 1945 to their marriage in Paris in June 1946.
At the end of her first letter, she wrote, "It was your understanding, your caring, that so enormously helped over the first, most difficult days. I shall be eternally grateful."
In one way, Kurt saved Gerda's life. But in another, she saved his.
Kurt Klein was born in Waldorf, Germany, in 1920, the youngest child of Ludwig and Alice Nahm Klein. When he was 16, his parents sent him to the United States with $10. He never saw them again.
Years later, the Academy Award-winning documentary, "America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference," captured his failed attempts to arrange visas and detailed how the U.S. government's bureaucracy enabled the deaths of thousands like Ludwig and Alice.
If Kurt could not save his parents, he could at least defend his new homeland. When he was 22, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Only four months after the end of World War II, Kurt proposed to Gerda.
When they began a new life in the United States, first in Buffalo, N.Y., and later in Scottsdale, Kurt and Gerda made it their mission for good to triumph over evil, love to overpower hate.
Of note among their many accomplishments - supporting the arts, community service, synagogue volunteer work - is the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation, established in 1998 and based in Narbeth, Pa., to promote education and lessen prejudice and bigotry.
In the aftermath of the Columbine tragedy in 1999, the Kleins were named spokes-people of the "Heart of Columbine" organization. They taught about the preciousness of life, that there is no difference between the death of one or one million.
Kurt Klein had a second career as a public speaker. Whether in the United States or abroad, he taught that at the end of pain, there exists goodness; when suffering subsides, hope can be rebuilt.
Kurt Klein's hopefulness and appreciation for life can be traced back to the end of the war, when he met Gerda and sensed the survivor behind the suffering.
In a letter just before their wedding in Paris, he wrote, "My peace of mind has been restored, thanks to your incomparably beautiful and brave words, penned with the selfless eloquence that only you can rise to."
Kurt Klein died April 19. He communicated his message of hope into his 82nd year.
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