Author Jill Gabrielle Klein, who spoke Friday night at Colony Cottage Recreation Center, is book-ended by survivors.
Her 87-year-old father, Gene Klein of the Village of Duval, survived the Holocaust. Her 14-year-old adopted daughter survived the 2004 tsunami in Thailand.
Jill Klein, who is a professor in Australia, brought her story of her father’s survival of the Nazi camps to life in her book, “We Got The Water: Tracing My Family’s Path Through Auschwitz.”
The book, published in 2013, took her 15 years to write.
Her painstaking research led her to ask many questions of her father and his two older sisters, who also survived the Holocaust, along with their mother.
In the presentation at Colony Cottage, she showed photographs and documents she relied on in her research. With suprising humor, she talked about gathering information from her father and aunts.
The event, sponsored by The Villages Lifelong Learning College, drew a packed house. A contingent from Gene Klein’s twice-weekly exercise class showed up in force
Gene Klein, known as “Gabi” as a boy, was born in a small portion of Czechoslovakia later absorbed into Hungary. It was a happy childhood until the Nazis marched in.
“Jewish students at my school were told not to come back on Monday,” Klein said. “My father was told to inventory his hardware store. There went our livelihood.”
Soon, Jews were forced to wear the Star of David. And then the Kleins and other Jews from their town were herded into train cars.
When they arrived at Auschwitz, 16-year-old Gabi’s father was exterminated, not that it was immediately evident as confusion was everywhere.
A day later, a fellow prisoner matter-of-factly told Gabi that his father had “gone up the chimney.”
Gabi had been chosen for slave labor. He was one of the lucky ones.
He witnessed unimaginable death and sickness.
“I had to come up with something to keep me alive. I knew my father had been killed. But I kept telling myself my mother and sisters were alive. So how terrible would it be if I died and they went home and I was not there?” Gene Klein remembered.
And there was a second survival instinct that kicked in.
“If these bastards kill me, they win and if I stay alive, I win,” he said.
Klein tells his story and breaks down only twice. The first is when he speaks of the kindness of a German engineer who provided him food during a two-week period.
“I credit this man with saving my life,” said Klein, fighting back the tears. “He took a huge chance. He could have ended up in the same camp as me.”
The second time he breaks down is when he tells of discovering that his mother and sisters had survived.
“My family’s survival was astronomical,” Gene Klein said. “If one survived, it was a miracle.”
While she was writing the book over the decade and a half period, Jill Klein adopted her daughter, who had been orphaned in the tsunami. Her now teen-age daughter was in the audience as the Kleins told their respective stories.
Jill Klein visited Auschwitz in 1989.
“My father has no interest in going back,” she said.
But she plans to take her daughter one day.
You can purchase, Jill Klein’s book through Amazon at the link below:
http://www.amazon.com/We-Got-Water-Tracing-Auschwitz/dp/0615806961
