Gerda Weissmann Klein was one of the few Jewish women who survived The Death March to Volary in 1945. Of the approximately 1,300 women forced to march 800 KM over 106 days, only some 350 survived. In Klein's survivor testimony video below, she describes the first moments of liberation, and recalls her experience meeting a US Army officer for the first time: "I was looking at him in incredible awe and disbelief, that I was looking at someone who fought for us... So I looked at him and said: 'We a

"I was the only one from my family who survived," Gerda Weissmann Klein recalled. "The only one of my dearest friends." In August 1939, 15-year-old Gerda returned from a summer vacation to her family home in Bielsko, Poland. She was to begin school within a few weeks. On September 1, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. The peaceful city of Bielsko was soon overtaken by the German army. Within weeks of the invasion, the able-bodied Jewish men of Bielsko, including Gerda's broth