Gerda's Story: A Response

At first, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this experience. Before meeting Gerda, I had never met a Holocaust survivor before. With Holli and Dorothy’s warnings that some survivors might not actually want to talk about their experiences, I was afraid that Alison and I might find ourselves in that situation. I just didn’t want to be intrusive, considering the sensitive nature of this project. Alison, though, knows Gerda from past events and when I found out that Gerda visits schools to talk about her experience quite frequently, I felt a little more at ease about this experience.

When Alison and I arrived at Gerda’s home, she greeted us at the door and brought us into the living room, asking as we walked in whether we had any plans for the evening. She had prepared dinner, she said, and we could eat after she told us her story. “It takes about two hours to tell,” she told us, “so we can eat afterward.” I thought it was interesting that she knew how long it would take to tell her story, but it makes sense considering she makes such frequent appearances.

As we sat down, Gerda asked if we had prepared questions for her. Neither Alison nor I had known where to begin, exactly, with our questions, so she started right in with her story. Gerda was very blunt, making everything quite clear for us and not skirting over any details. During her story, she would ask us questions about situations she had found herself in, inquiring as to what Alison or I would have done in her situation. When, during the German occupation of Poland, she had stepped out per her parents’ request and was asked by German policemen if she was a Jew. Gerda paused in her story and asked us to put ourselves in that situation. Would we have said yes or no? With either response, Gerda had an explanation as to what would have happened. She wanted us to understand what had been going on in her mind during this exchange. Weighing the pros and cons of either response, Gerda answered that yes, she was a Jew, but had no armband because she was not yet 13 years old. When they asked for her address, she gave it to them but told them that Russians had taken her family’s belongings already, in the hopes that this might prevent them from coming to her house. The policemen had told her they would come to check her papers, but, luckily, never did.

Gerda also asked us what we would have taken with us if we had been in Poland when the ghetto was built in 1942. We thought for a minute and came up with answers like blankets, pictures, and family mementos. “What about pots and pans? What would you cook with?” Gerda asked. She told us that when she asks students this question, sometimes they answer that they would have brought their laptops or cell phones. Chuckling, she tells us that she explains to the students that this was a time before laptops and cellular telephones, encouraging them to think about the things in life that they really could not live without.

As Gerda continued her story, Alison and I learned that her mother was away by the Nazis while she [Gerda] had been placed in hiding. Here, Gerda paused to tell us that she and her mother had been very close. She was devastated at the thought that she had never been able to say goodbye to her mother, or tell her that she loved her. This was one of the hardest parts of the story to listen to, because here Gerda became very emotional. She had made it very clear that her entire experience had been devastating, but losing her mother had impacted her so greatly that it was obviously a difficult thing to talk about. She has no memory of her experiences in the ghetto after finding out that her mother was gone. Gerda continued to tell us the story, explaining that she was then put into hiding with a horrible woman whom she had to call “mother,” making her situation all the more difficult as she was still grief-stricken over the loss of her actual mother.

While in hiding with this woman, Gerda cared for three children, two teenage boys and one young girl, all the while being called “Alice,” the name her new “mother” had given her. The woman constantly took advantage of Gerda, manipulating her into situations, all the while justifying her actions with the idea that she was responsible for saving Gerda. Eventually, the woman’s husband, to whom she was unfaithful, returned, becoming a beacon of kindness for Gerda. Although he could not do much for her, he was compassionate and understood the difficult situation she was in.

Gerda and the woman’s husband returned briefly to her hometown, looking for items her family had hidden that the woman wanted to find and, in all likelihood, sell. While there, a young man recognized Gerda and told her what had happened to her father, whom Gerda had not seen since they last met, when he explained that he was going into hiding in a room outside of the ghetto. He told her that he was keeping a cyanide pill with him at all times, which he would take if the Germans found him. The young man explained that her father, having brought several others into hiding with him, was caught when he went out for food. That was all he knew, and Gerda never found any other information. Gerda was telling us how sorry she was that she never got the young man’s name, because she was never able to contact him again. The Red Cross couldn’t tell her anything about what had happened to her father, and here she was as emotional as she had been when she told us about her mother, calling her father “Daddy” while she spoke of him.

At the war’s end, Gerda was provided with postage by her “mother’s” husband so she could write to her family, and he encouraged her to leave the house when, in 1946, an old neighbor asked her to come live with her and her husband. Although Gerda’s “mother” had taken the money this neighbor had sent, Gerda eventually got it back and left as soon as she could, finding herself in the care of an old family friend.

Gerda told us that, upon arriving to her old neighbor’s home, she was shy. She was dirty and did not want the old neighbor to see the lice in her hair. At this new home, Gerda took a bath for the first time in three years, and the following day the woman bought her a new pair of shoes, a skirt, and two blouses. Gerda told us that she was overwhelmed by the choices she now had. “Should I wear the pink blouse or the white blouse?” she would ask herself, a choice she had not had the pleasure of making in a very long time. Gerda digressed briefly to tell us about the quality of clothing in those times, about how cherished every article of clothing was, unlike today.

Eventually Gerda was given the opportunity to go to England, which she accepted, meeting with a Rabbi in Warsaw to confirm her spot on the journey. She became a registered nurse during her five years in England, then came to America when her cousin got her an affidavit. Gerda’s strength of spirit, evident to us in her story telling, got her through the numerous obstacles that she faced in America. She and her husband were married in 1955, having met at Mount Sinai Hospital.

Gerda’s husband joined us for dinner after he story came to a close, where we talked about our schools, religious upbringings, ideas for the future, etc. Gerda and her husband are very sweet, and it was a wonderful experience. Alison and I left after being given a brief introduction to Gerda’s family via photographs set out on a bookshelf.

Gerda’s story was, and is, incredible. I can’t imagine the strength Gerda had, and must still have, to have been able to go through the ordeal she experienced and then talk about it so many years later. Alison and I were lucky, I think, to be paired with a survivor who was somehow so levelheaded about her experience. It’s amazing that she, as well as the other survivors with whom our peers have been paired, are capable of seeing the good they can do by telling their stories.

-K