All But My Life

I heard this powerful and unforgettable woman. Shared a meal with her. Wept when she passed. A book to follow you through life. Deep wisdom.

I ended up receiving a signed copy - how cool is that!? I always feel like using the word "enjoy" is hard to say when applying it to books involving matters and people of the holocaust, but I cannot come up with another word for it. This was a great book that I did not want to put down.

It is powerful to listen to this book in a voice that could be the author's. I have had the opportunity to hear Mrs. Klein speak and this recording of her story is a life changing opportunity. She tells the stories of all the wonderful (and awful) people that she shared her life with over the 6 years.

On the hot June day that Gerda Weissmann left her home for the last time, her father insisted that she wear her hiking boots. Gerda resisted, but an unspoken plea in her father's eye convinced her to strap them on. During a death march from January through April of 1945, those boots saved Gerda Weissmann's life. Many other women died of cold and starvation, but most fell for simple lack of footwear. Her camp sister, with whom she survived the worst horrors in several concentration and slave labor camps, died of exhaustion at a water pump minutes after American liberators freed the women from the march.Ms. Klein's tale about her boots, screened at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, led me to her book. I wanted to know every detail--although, over the years, I have been privileged to hear many personal accounts from Holocaust survivors I know. Too many still cannot not speak about what they lived through. Millions never had the chance at all. By itself, the silence of the majority makes Ms. Klein's testimony priceless, like every other personal Holocaust chronicle. So does her reminder not to take anything for granted. So does her gem of a soul. Alyssa A. Lappen

I read this book very recently as part of my school system's summer reading program. I had expected it to be an intriguing and saddening story about a girl's experiences in the Holocaust, but I did not expect it to be so moving, inspirational, and relateable true story. This book opened myself, and my friends to what these women must have felt. The fact that Gerda was our age at the time of her captivity and was going through the exact same experiences that we were help us to understand what was going on and how she must have felt about personal problems and boys, and basically everything that teenage girls still go through. We realized how truly lucky we were to live our lives free and have all of our friends to go to when we need help, and not have to worry where and if we are having our next meal. I recommend this book to anyone, any age, and sex, any race. Although she is a teenage girl, anyone can profit from this book.

I want to thank Gerda for sharing her experiences in Nazi Germany. Her accounts are so horrific, but within it all I also felt her profound sense of hope and faith. In reading her memoir I was moved by the thought of what an incredible plan God had in store for Gerda. She survived to tell not only her story but that of so many Jews who lost there lives in WWII. Gerda, God is working through you to share with the world what Mankind is capable of.....ManKind, such an ironic word to use in that sentence, for Gerda saw very little kindness in most of Nazi Germany, yet she lights the precious moments of when kindness was shown to her and her friends. It is a book I shall never forget, and when I am feeling challenged in my own life, I will pick up Gerda's book and re-read, and re-read, for I know I have more to learn for this work. Thank-you Gerda! God Bless!