provided oral histories to the museum as well as doing that program. interviewer: how do you think your oral histories have contributed to our understanding of the holocaust? leslie swift: oral testimony in general can serve as a complicating factor or perspective to more traditional primary sources such as officials documents or diaries from the period. i think historians in the past have been wary of using testimony as a primary source. i think that has changed a lot over the years and that historians are realizing the incredible value and utility of this live history. it may contradict the historical narrative, but it definitely adds layers to it. interviewer: leslie swift, thank you very much.

leslie swift: thank you. kurt klein: my name is kurt klein and i was born in 1920 in a town called waldorf which is very close to heidelberg in germany. linda kuzmack: tell me about your parents and your family? kurt klein: i grew up in the post-world war i era, and of course, those were very difficult times. my parents were struggling to get along during this economic chaos that existed during those times. you may remember, there was this very serious inflation, i mean ludicrous in a sense, such as has never been seen before, and that made it very difficult to

carry on. anything at all. my father had a business that was made extremely difficult because of the economic conditions that existed after world war i. he was a broker for hops and tobacco and grain that he would buy from the farmers in the town that we lived in, and my mother helped him all she could. and of course, they, along with so many others, were struggling to exist in those days. i -- but still, you might say that i grew up in a middle-class

family, and of course, after going to elementary school in this town, it was expected that i would go to high school in heidelberg.

really, it it was called the oberrealschule which was then on a higher level than high school. but also, of course, already quite eventful times, and i grew up in mid all this chaos of the different parties of the republic fighting each other and from my earliest childhood on, so the formation of the nazi party, and how they gradually gained strength. early on, there were perhaps times when one didn't take them all that seriously, but it soon became apparent that they were a force to be reckoned with. linda kuzmack: in your life, tell me, tell me about how this affected you. kurt klein: it affected me later on especially, when people were won over by the nazis, they were no longer our friends or our neighbors as we had been used to it. and it also represented an ominous threat because from early on, hitler and all of the others made it quite clear how they felt about the jews and what they would be doing to the jews.

but it also meant that sometimes, you would see all of these slogans on the walls, many of them directed against jews, and so you had a feeling even earlier on that you were truly being singled out. you hardly knew for what reason, but you knew that all this propaganda was directed against you, and it made it difficult at times to carry on because you obviously -- in my father's case, i don't know the details but you could not do business with people who felt that way. nevertheless, things were still more or less all right until hitler actually came to power. but i could see that the nazi

party was gaining strength, and so could the others. but actually, nobody believed that they were capable of doing the things which in fact it turned out they later did. linda kuzmack: did you lose friends because of this atmosphere? kurt klein: once hitler was in power. i don't remember losing any earlier, but once hitler was in power, there was a gradual alienation from the rest of my schoolmates. some of them were better than others, but many of them initially apologized for some of the things that hitler said he was going to do, assuring us that he of course did not mean

people like us -- my parents or our friends. gradually, you could almost see the direct relation of their indoctrination in the hitler youth and how much more hostile they became until in the end they stopped talking altogether, or they might perhaps taunt you. even then, it was well known that there were concentration camps, and they would say things to the effect that, "if you people behave, you might be all right, but if you don't, watch out -- you might all wind up in concentration camps." of course, they didn't -- long before then, they had stopped to associate with you. at first, these people had been in my house constantly, and i had they had eaten in our home and i ate in theirs.

there was really no difference. i grew up considering myself part of that scene, never thinking that i would be singled out for something like this, and i saw the gradual evolution of how all this changed. it was bewildering to someone growing up amid the turmoil of that period. linda kuzmack: what was high school -- tell me about those early years. what kind of things you did. kurt klein: actually, i did all the things that any young man does or likes. i engaged in sports, just as the others did. i liked soccer. i liked books quite a bit.

and that helped me later, also. when i was sort of shut off from the world. but even early on, i liked books. i belonged to an organization of young jewish young people. we went on hikes very often, went mountain climbing swimming, skiing. we did all the things that young people are apt to do. and i liked movies a great deal. american movies in those days were quite popular. and i read books also by american authors. i remember such things as jack london and many others, and mark

twain, of course. "huck finn." i did all those things. in that sense, i had a normal upbringing. and then, later on, when all the other boys turned away from me and there were very few jewish friends in the town i lived in -- there was nobody exactly my age, but there were some other boys close to me, but no more than two or three. the rest of my jewish friends i found in heidelberg, which was of coarse, large enough to have a larger jewish population. that, to some extent, made up for my not being able to associate with anybody in the town in which i lived. and i have some very fond memories, for instance, of this organization i mention, of going off into the mountains and going hiking, sometimes for a few day

trips, staying in youth hostels overnight. those were all things that sort of made my formative years quite interesting and, to some extent, enjoyable. and that went on even after the nazis came to power. but it stopped when i was approximately 14. at that point, my father was no longer able to send me to high school, which had, which required tuition. it was thought best for jewish young people at the time, it was quite common to learn a trade. so i thought about what i would

like to be. since i had always liked books i chose printing as my vocation. i did, in fact, get a job in printing in the town where i lived. in fact, it was on the same street where i lived. and this man was quite willing to take me on, and i worked there for a number of months. and then the authorities heard about it and made it impossible for him to keep me on. so then i had to stop that. and i later on worked for a jewish firm, it was, that was still in existence at that time, which was a tobacco factory where they actually made cigars. and i found some sort of a job

until the time that i in fact left germany, but it was becoming more and more evident that, that jews should leave if anybody at all would have them and not very many countries would have them. it was not quite that easy, but especially young people -- it was suggested for young people to, to leave because there was obviously no future for them in germany. and so we, too, came to that conclusion, and since we had some relatives in the states that seemed to be the natural place to go. the -- i was fortunate, and now in retrospect, i know that it must have saved my life.

my sister, who was older than i, was in nurse's training in germany, but she also decided, of course, that it was time to leave. and as someone vouched for her and so she came here a year ahead of me, and had she not been here, i would not have gotten out because she was able to go after people and ask for the necessary papers that one needed in those days -- an affidavit of support. and so she did that for me so that by 1937, i was able to leave also and come to buffalo where at that time my sister lived, and so did various other relatives. among them an uncle and a man

n aunt and their daughter, and i stayed with them the first few years when i came to buffalo. i also was able after a couple of weeks to find a job in printing again so that i could continue that training, and that is in fact what i made my career. there were, of course -- when i was still in germany, you could see the gradual more and more repressive measures that were being directed at jews. the thing that i remember so

well is being in school and having, having to attend -- it was mandatory to attend -- these propaganda films that were done in those days. "triumph of the will" being one of them. i still remember that vividly because i could firsthand -- i could see it firsthand how films like that affected especially the young and how they swung them over to unquestioned obedience to the nazi cause. but everybody was affected by them -- the older people, too. and you could see that the more this propaganda works on them, the more they believed it. well, i remember attending such films or listening to these speeches on the radio, and i was

a teenager then, and wondering that, how i ever got into this position. i personally do not know any such people as they described. and, how is this possible, and how is it possible to have all this venom directed at you when in fact you have not done a thing and you have just lived a peaceful life, and my parents were simply law-abiding citizens who were struggling to get along in a very difficult economy? that, of course, was very , very puzzling to me. the point i was trying to make was that the nazis knew almost like no one else how to use the power of the media to sway people's opinions.

you know, the radio had come into its own during my early childhood, and they used that for propaganda purposes as no one had before or since, and that's how they were able to sway people and get them to do the things they did. linda kuzmack: let's move forward now. you had been talking about you in buffalo. kurt klein: right. in buffalo, i was in printing, and i graduated and improved myself a little. i found some other jobs in printing. of course, at that point, from then on, both my sister and i were trying to make it possible for our parents to follow us.

i should mention that i also had an older brother who came to the states about a year after i did, although he initially settled down. in -- i forget the exact sequence. first in new york and then in boston and then back in new york i believe is how it was. and we, of course tried very hard to get our parents to follow us, but those were difficult times here also. and it was not easy to get the necessary papers for my parents. at least it was difficult to convince anybody that there was any immediate urgency about getting them out, and the answer usually was, "yes, in due time

after you have established yourselves, you will see them also follow you." and so while we continuously worked on it, really, nothing that much happened, until, really, until november 1938 when kristallnacht came. then, people began to take some notice, and, of course, there was absolute panic among the jews in germany about getting out. unfortunately, my parents hesitated a little too long about registering at the american consulate in stuttgart,

and so they got a very -- they had a system of priority numbers in those days. so they got a very high number which made it impossible for them to contemplate leaving immediately. there were many attempts that we made at the time to have them leave on the basis that we their children, were asking for them, but as we eventually found out, you needed to be a citizen in order for -- i believe it was called form 575 or something like that, which meant that some people were allowed in outside the quota, but, basically, they had adhered to the quota system and the high priority numbers, which, of course, everybody wanted to get out at the time. this went on and on, but in each

letter, i -- it so happens that i have every letter that my parents ever wrote to me during that period from the time i left them. and each letter would be full of some news of more repressive measures that were taking place so that before kristallnacht for example, they had written to us that now they had been forced to -- my father had been forced to sell his business, and the nazis had effectively throttled jewish businesses anyway and had through their boycott pointed out to the german population

that they ought not to buy from jews or associate with them. those measures were felt in pretty short order, so that there came a point when my father was forced to sell his business, and a very short time later, also the house that they were in because they simply could not keep that up. and after they had already made the arrangements for selling the house, but the man who bought it was not going to move in until the following spring because he was going to do some renovating. and so it became an agonizing decision for them too, should they stay in that house throughout the winter, largely without heat or other, or income, or should they avail themselves of whatever was offered to them in a very run

down, dilapidated part of the town, also, and should they take that while that was, while the taking was still good? this is what they were agonizing over at the point when kristallnacht happened. after that, they were under orders to move, and all these decisions were taken from their hands. and as it wound up, they moved in with an acquaintance, a jewish lady, in fact the wife of the owner of that cigar factory for which i had worked and where my father had subsequently worked for a little bit in the office when he could no longer

have his own business. she had an old house somewhere in another part of the town, and they were ordered to move to what was really above a stable -- what had been a stable. it was not then anymore. and in just one room. of course, during kristallnacht, we were to find out that some of the -- some of my schoolmates, one in particular, had become the leader of this gang of hoodlums, who had invaded my parents' house and lined them up against the wall and proceeded to smash all their furniture and everything they could lay their hands on. and they took my father with them that night, and he had to spend some time in the local

jail. what was at least a few days -- but was released a few days later, probably, because of his age, but it was by far the better part of what happened in kristallnacht because most men were simply sent to concentration camps. but what i was going to say about the gang that invaded my parents' house -- this is, this was then a boy who had been in and out of our home, had eaten at our table, and he led this gang in really making threats toward these elderly people -- defenseless people -- and treated them in the most abominable manner and vandalized the whole place.

linda kuzmack: so you were hearing all of this, as it were, through the letters you receive? kurt klein: yes. well, some of it was through veiled references my parents were able to make, but we could usually -- we learned to read between the lines, and we knew what they meant when they made references. for instance, they let us know that their furniture had been smashed because i still remember my mother's use of the phrase that they now were possessors of mini furniture. and all of this was actually confirmed to us by an uncle of mine who was fortunate enough to leave after those times, and because he had a daughter in england and a very influential son-in-law who got them out, and

they eventually wound up also coming to buffalo where i lived and where they had a son, so they were able to fill me in on some of the details of what happened. linda kuzmack: what did you do? this is after kristallnacht. tell us you very briefly so that we can move into the war experience for you. kurt klein: i should however also mentioned that we kept on trying by every means to get them out, but at every turn, something else happened. and the next thing that happened was in 1940 when in the fall of 1940, we received a letter from

a relative in switzerland who informed us that -- he said, "you will, of course, have read the reports in the newspapers of what has happened to your parents along with all the jews of the province," and at the whim of the local authorities, they were told within 20 minutes to two hours to pack up a few things and take along with them, and they were in fact deported to the south of france. to what was then the unoccupied zone of france to a camp that had at one time served as a refugee camp for the civil war

refugees that came from spain because it was near the pyrenees and the spanish border. and they were simply dumped there without blankets, without adequate food, without anything, and the germans told the french to take over. and so we -- of course, it took a long time until we then established some direct contact with my parents because they -- at first, they could not write and when they did, those things took weeks and weeks in those days. and also because there was already a war going on in europe by that time, of course. in 1939, it also added to our

complications. when the war started, we again were sent far back, incredibly far back as far as helping them to get out of there. because normal escape routes were out of the question. you could only find certain ones, and then only if you had quite a bit of money just for the passage and everything else. but at any rate, being in the unoccupied zone of france was -- at the same time, they were, of course segregated. they were not allowed to live together there. men were in a different camps and women, but they were usually once a week allowed to visit each other. and of course, we got their letters, and we wrote to them. we were able to do that, and

this is quite a record of what went on in those camps, but whereas it was of course a catastrophe that this had happened, at the same time, it still made it possible for them to perhaps get out easier than if they had remained in germany because they could go to the american consulate in marseille if they were summoned. by the consul. they were allowed out if they were summoned to take care of this matter. somehow or other, there was always a flaw, always a new complication, and this went on in an absolutely kafkaesque way. at every corner, there was another obstacle.

and we had booked passage for them many times, and they had to let those terms expire because their papers were not ready, and they were moved -- my father was sent to another camp closer to marseille, and so it went on and on. they could, in fact, with the right papers have left by way of spain and portugal. we had a portuguese ship passage for them several times and each time, something -- they could never get clearance on time. and this went on, on and on. in the meantime, i -- this was now running into 1942.

and by the summer of 42 -- actually, perhaps five, six weeks later -- one of my letters was returned "address unknown, left no forwarding address." and as we found out through a tracing bureau after the war they were, in fact, deported to auschwitz along with all the thousands and thousands who were there. this also -- this time was the time when i was inducted in the army, so that it all happened

together. and i, i recently found a notice from the state department that reached us in november of 1942 a time when i was already in the army, that said that they were now pleased to let us know that our parents had gotten clearance. this was three months after they had been deported to auschwitz . but at any rate, i was inducted in the army. to me, it was a great relief and also, perhaps a source of pride that i was able to finally do something about this. here we had been literally paralyzed for years, always at the whim of whatever authorities

were in charge. and now i was finally able to fight this big evil. and i was in the army and actually never finished basic training before they found out that i had a language capability. and in those days, of course they were looking for german-speaking personnel and german-speaking personnel that no doubt they could trust, so that i was pulled out of -- away from the unit that i had been assigned to in those days and sent to a military intelligence

training center in maryland in fact, in which we were assigned to these different jobs, either prisoner of war interrogation or some military government or some other activities, and i wound up with a unit that was charged with prisoner of war interrogation. and we first went on maneuvers and this was now 1942. no, this was 43. and later, by the end of that summer, we were sent overseas -- first to england, and then i spent nine months in northern ireland where i was assigned to the unit that i went through the actual battles with, namely, the fifth u.s. infantry division.

and as such was attached to a regiment, and my job was to interrogate prisoners for whatever tactical information they could give, and that's what i did. i went through the various campaigns. i went through normandy, not too much after d-day, and went through the various campaigns and also in luxembourg and later on in germany and first in the north and the rural area, and then another time more in the

south, but at one time, we were called. i belonged to patton's third army, and we ended up in czechoslovakia. this was toward the end of the war. and we were in a town, and these were the final stages of the war. it was becoming quite the is that it would soon be over, but reports reached us that the town a few miles away was ready to surrender because they were flying white flags from their houses, so it became my job,

along with a very small medical detachment and the military government detachment to go to that town and take the surrender. it was my job to see if they were still any germans -- german soldiers, prisoners there, and we went to that town on the evening of may 6, and the military government colonel took care of the civilian surrender with the mayor of the town whereas i went about my business looking for germans, and i only found a few in a german field

hospital. they had converted a schoolhouse to a field hospital, and i found a few and made arrangements, made mental notes of what to do the next day. we were not in any position to do anything then and there, but it was late in the day, and the war was still going on. we had received some shelling on the way to the town, so we decided to go back to our unit about six, eight miles away from there, and it was getting dark so when we got back, i compared notes with the military government colonel, and he told me that in fact they had come across a group of about 120 jewish girls who had been dumped into an abandoned factory by

their ss guards and that we would see what could done the following morning. that was the first inkling i had of that particular incident. the following morning, i went back with a greatly augmented group of people. the medics were there in great numbers, and again with the military government colonel also. i drove into that factory and i saw this courtyard. there were some -- what i can only describe them as living skeletons, walking around, going about certain chores such as

getting water, in the courtyard, and over in the doorway, i saw another young woman sort of leaning against the doorway, and she seemed to be in slightly better condition than the rest that i had just seen, and i walked over to her and addressed her i think both in english and in german. and, because i assumed, of course, that she spoke german. which she confirmed. and i, i wanted to see, of course, where the rest of her companions were, and i asked her about that, and she just motioned me in, and we went inside, and that was, of course,

a scene of devastation that nobody who has ever seen it will ever forget. these girls -- young women mostly -- were lying on scraps of straw that they had found in various stages of disease or close to death. i mean, it was simply something that one could not believe, that anybody would permit that. and the young woman i had seen there did a most remarkable thing. that really -- i mean, it just shattered me. when we came into this large

room where all these women were lying, she pointed at some of them, quoted some lines from a well-known german poem by goethe called "the divine" in the words -- freely translated -- mean something like "noble be man" -- she made a gesture -- "helpful and good," and that really simply devastated me. i started to talk to some of them, and one of them even addressed me in english. and when i tried to reassure her that now she was all right, she went like this and said, "no it's too late. too late."

and in fact, i heard later that she did die in the hours later. of course, our unit made immediate arrangements to take care of these girls, and we evacuated the hospital of whatever germans were still in it, and we took them to the hospital where they came under the care and supervision of our american doctors. i should mention perhaps that this girl i met first, and who was my guide, is, has been my wife for 44 years and that we had eight grandchildren -- three children and eight grandchildren.

but this was still may 7, and that was just when the war was coming to an end. and i, i mean, i was totally shaken by this experience, but i had to go back to my unit because now, all these german troops were surrendering en masse, and i really had my hands full for a few days. when i was able to get back to the hospital a few days later, i, of course wanted to -- i saw all the girls, but i wanted to see this girl in particular, and i found that she had in fact also collapsed on admittance to the hospital, and that she was listed in critical condition. and at one point during that time, the doctors wanted to amputate her legs, but she would not let them.

and fortunately, she was right. despite the fact that she was that ill, we carried on for quite a lively conversation. she, when i was ready to leave she gave me a few sheets of paper, and they happened to be some thoughts that she had expressed on liberation and what it was, in fact, was an ode to her liberating americans, and perhaps you can see why i became interested in her. it -- she was an unusual person with a certain aura about her that i just knew i had to get to know better.

and from that evolved our relationship, and i was able to visit her later still in the hospital, even after i was transferred from the immediate area. i would still come back a few times, and later on made it possible for her to be near where i was, and i found her some lodging -- her and her friend -- in munich where i had been transferred after the war. our story sort of came to a climax when we married about a year later in paris. i had gotten a leave from the army by that time and gone back

to buffalo, but i came back to paris, and after a great deal of difficulty with the local authorities there, we finally got married, and that is our story. the -- i -- it is difficult to think back to those times and to think that we are really those people, but that is what happened to us. i, of course, had some very interesting experiences while i was in the army. among other things, what happened to me was that i, that one of the german soldiers that were brought to me for interrogation happened to be hitler's chauffeur. and he gave me the story of the

last days of hitler and eva braun in the bunker in berlin, which has gone down in the history books as being the definitive story of hitler's last days. he told me how hitler had instructed him personally to dispose of his and eva braun's remains by pouring gas over their bodies in the courtyard of that bunker because they did not want the remains to fall into russian hands. russia had, of course, taken berlin or would shortly thereafter. so he carried out all their orders, and that is the story that came down to me, and i see by the history books also to others.

that is apparently how it happened. linda kuzmack: did he describe to you the last days in the bunker? kurt klein: well, he did, but i do not have a very detailed recollection of that. they must have in chaotic, but i really cannot tell you details that, you know, that would throw any light on it now. i do remember that he described his personal duties that hitler had instructed him to do. and so, that -- i think that, in fact, no traces were ever found by the russians of hitler and eva braun, his mistress, so that is the story of that.

as i said before, unfortunately, we found out after the war that my parents, along with so many others, had been deported to auschwitz. so i certainly knew, if not firsthand, at least i had an understanding for what had gone on during the war. i will say this, that i always -- i really did think the nazis capable -- i knew their mentality, and i did think them capable of doing the things which in fact they did do. nothing truly surprised me. i merely didn't know theays knew that it would come to a war, even as a young boy. the signs of it were there, and the turmoil of that world and the quest for revenge that the

average german had at the time -- i just knew that it would come to another war in which i no doubt would be involved. >> in 1945, 70 years ago allied forces liberated the nazi concentration camps. for the next several weeks we will hear holocaust stories from those who have lived them. these interviews are a part of the oral history collection at the holocaust museum in washington, d c next gerda klein discusses how the invasion of poland changed her life. she discusses her experience in jewish transit camps and being forced on a death march. this oral history is almost two hours.

klein: i was born on may 8, 1924 in the most southwest part of poland. it was in the province of silasia. it was at the foothill of the mountain range. interviewer: would you tell me about your parents and your family as a young girl? klein: in retrospect, my parents seemed to me saintly. my memory is very vivid. it's perfection which i remember. i had one older brother, his name was arthur.