My clearest recollection though, there was some two Americans at night,
but my clearest recollection is that of the morning. The SS had departed,
they left the great coats, put on civilian clothing. I stood in the doorway that factory.
I knew I was free but somehow the reality of it,
you know I prayed for it for six years, in every waking hour,
and I couldn't, I couldn't absorb the wonder of of perhaps freedom,
until a crushing almost overwhelming joy by seeing the strange car coming down the hill,
no longer green, the white star of the American Army on its hood, and two men in unfamiliar
uniforms sat in it. I stood in the doorway, and one of them, we gathered them to be Americans,
jumped out and he came toward me. And I was looking at him with incredible awe, disbelief,
but I was looking at someone who fought for us, of course I was terribly frightened what,
you know, what his reaction would be if I tell him we are Jewish, but I felt him I had to tell.
So I looked at him and I said, 'We are Jews, you know.' He didn't answer me,
which seemed to me eternity, and then he said,
'So am I.' This was the greatest moment of my life.
Then he asked an incredible question, he asked if he could see the other ladies,
obviously a form of address we hadn't known and heard and I told him that most of the girls were
inside, they were too ill to walk. He asked me to come with him, I didn't know what he meant.
He held the door open for me and let me proceed him,
and restored me to humanity again.
And he has been holding the door open for me now for 50 years, my husband.
[Interviewer] His name?
[Gerda] Kurt Klein.
Well pretty soon trucks came, Red Cross trucks, they took us into a
makeshift hospital.
I had the first bath in four years, five years.
All my clothes were gathered to be burnt. I went into the
lining of my boots, there were two things there. One, some poison which I had bought
in one of the camps for the last piece of jewelry that was sewn into my clothes.
It was against the day when we would be put into a camp to apparently amuse Germans and I knew that
that I didn't need to keep my promise to my father, that I'd kill myself first.
I let it gladly go to destruction. And the other thing was a little bundle of the pictures
of my parents and my brother, and Abek, which I carried in my boot, and that of course I saved.
And I was given a bath,
and a red, not red, a blue and white checkered shirt,
men's shirt, which was sort of like a nightgown,
and taken to bunks with sheets, the first time I slept on sheets for years.
And the nurse came and carried a tray with warm milk and one of the cups had a flower on it
and I desperately wanted that cup was the flower and I got it.
And I started to drink the warm milk lying in bed,
and this is when I started to cry, and I cried for days.
And I wondered what happened to this first young American whom I
gave my name, but I didn't know his name.
And I realized that the war was still going on for a day or two and I wondered if he was something
happened to him. And strangely enough that night I started to pray again and I prayed for his safety
not realizing that I was praying for the safety of my husband.