Author, historian, and speaker, Gerda Weissmann Klein has captivated audiences worldwide with her powerful story about surviving the Holocaust. Her uplifting presentations take audiences through one of the darkest eras of our world’s history. She is exclusively represented by Leading Authorities.

In 1939, 15 year-old Gerda Weissmann Klein’s life would change forever as German troops invaded her home in Beilsko, Poland. Her brother Arthur was ordered to a labor camp and she was cruelly separated from her parents and sent to a slave-labor camp. This day would be forever ingrained in Klein’s memory, as it was the last time she would ever see her family again. Never losing hope, Klein would spend the next three years in a succession of slave-labor camps, until she was forced to walk in a 350-mile death march in which 2,000 women were subjected to exposure, starvation, and arbitrary execution. Despite such atrocities, Klein never lost the will to survive.

Klein’s account of living through the Holocaust is documented in her autobiography, All But My Life, in print for 46 years in 55 editions, which has attained the status of a classic. The book depicts her view of the dark years of the Holocaust, a progression that ultimately led to her liberation from a death march by her future husband, Kurt Klein, an American intelligence officer. Her testimony is so compelling that All But My Life has become required reading in some school districts throughout the U.S. The Kleins’ last book together was The Hours After: Letters of Love and Longing in War’s Aftermath. Her most recent book, The Wings of EPOH, is about a boy struggling with an autism spectrum disorder and the personal courage he finds from an unlikely relationship with an empathetic butterfly.

The Kleins’ story is portrayed in the film Testimony, a permanent exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. In June 1997, Klein was appointed to the council of the Holocaust Museum by President Clinton. The 1995 HBO documentary, One Survivor Remembers, in which Klein recounts some of her wartime experiences, won a TV Emmy Award, two Cable Ace Awards, and an Oscar.

In 1996, Klein was one of five women to receive the prestigious international Lion of Judah award in Jerusalem. She was featured on the cover of a McDougall-Littel educational textbook, The Americans, alongside such other notable figures as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan, and Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf. In January of 2006, Klein was the keynote speaker at the United Nation’s first official observance of the Holocaust. Her presentation received a standing ovation from the audience in the General Assembly and was covered by most major media.

Klein’s constant striving for the preservation of human rights and dignity has earned her seven Doctorates of Humane Letters, along with countless other awards. In 1998 along with her late husband, Klein founded the Gerda and Kurt Klein Foundation (www.kleinfoundation.org) to promote tolerance, lessen prejudice, and encourage community service focused on local hunger relief. Her recent television appearances include 60 Minutes, Oprah, and CBS Sunday Morning. She and her late husband have three children and eight grandchildren.