When we read about people rounded up by the Nazis, we wonder,
“Why didn’t they leave? Couldn’t they see this coming?” The Weissmann family in
Poland saw it coming. But Julius, the patriarch of the family had suffered a
heart attack and couldn’t move. Most of the family was sent to death camps. Gerda,
Julius’ granddaughter, was forced on a 350-mile death march with 4,000 other
Jewish women. Then she and 120 survivors were locked in a factory with
explosives and a timer set to eliminate them. Heavy rain kept the timer from functioning.
The day before her twenty-first birthday, Gerda was rescued by American
soldiers. "I stood in the doorway of the factory, aware I was free. One of
the men approached me. I said, ‘We’re Jewish,’ and he replied, ‘So am I.” He
invited me to accompany him, holding the door open for me. He’s continued to open
doors for me fifty years as my husband."
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