All but My Life Essay

Surviving Death with Hope and Strength

All but My Life is a memoir by Gerda Weissman Klein, which was published in 1957 and is one of the few published memoirs of a holocaust survivor. Klein’s memoir describes the experiences in her life from the time when Germans invade her hometown, Bielitz, Poland, on September 3rd, 1939, to the time when she is rescued and freed from German control six years later. All but My Life illustrates the true suffering and horrors that Jews had to endure during Hitler’s reign of power which is described through Klein’s personnel experiences. Klein’s journey from camp to camp lead by the Nazi anti-Semitic ideology and her experiences along the way provides great understanding about the lives of European Jews during World War II. The events and experiences described in Klein’s memoir are able to reflect the larger context of World War II in Europe in many different ways, while her relationship with her family and friendships created with other Jewish women show more of the individual aspects of her experiences.

Many of Klein’s experiences offer very useful information and insight that reflects the larger context of World War II in Europe. After Germany’s defeat in the Great War, new fascist Germany, ruled by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi government, was as powerful as ever and seeking revenge. Anti-Semitism became the cornerstone of Nazi ideology and state policy (Merriman, 1029). Hitler proclaimed that the one of the reasons why Germany lost the Great War was because of the Jews and that they are the invisible foes of the German people (Merriman, 1012). Klein’s story begins when Germany invaded her hometown of Bielitz, Poland on September 3rd, 1939 (Klein, 8). A month after the German invasion of Bielitz, the Gestapo, German criminal police, force Klein’s brother, Arthur, onto a Nazi transport and she never sees him again (Klein, 21). In 1942, the Nazi’s forced all Jews in Bielitz to move out of the town so it can be Judenrein, free...