SUNDAY, APRIL 10 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C9
quoted a line by the German poet
Goethe: “Noble be man, merciful
and good.”
“There was nothing that she
could have said that would have
underscored the grim irony of the
situation better.... It was a
totally shattering experience for
me.”
Mrs. Klein was hospitalized
and visited almost daily by Kurt.
They were separated for about a
year as she struggled to obtain
approval to immigrate to the
United States, but married in
Paris in 1946 and then settled in
Buffalo, where they raised three
children. While Kurt ran a print-
ing and editing company, Mrs.
Klein learned English and
launched a writing career, pub-
lishing a weekly column, “Stories
for Young Readers,” that ran for 17
years in the Buffalo News.
Reviewing her memoir in the
New York Times, Herbert Mit-
gang wrote that “her story, like
Anne Frank’s, is not morbid but
soul-searching and human.” Mrs.
Klein later wrote children’s books
including “The Blue Rose” (1974),
about a girl with developmental
disabilities, and “Promise of a
New Spring” (1981), which used
the allegory of a forest fire to
teach young people about the
Holocaust.
Her other books included “A
Passion for Sharing” (1984), a
biography of philanthropist
Edith Rosenwald Stern, and “The
Hours After” (2000), a collection
of love letters that she and her
husband wrote before their wed-
ding.
Like Mrs. Klein, Kurt often
spoke about his own experience
during World War II and the
Holocaust, when his parents were
unable to join him in the United
States and perished at Auschwitz.
His story was featured in a 1994
episode of the PBS documentary
series “American Experience.”
Both of the Kleins were inter-
viewed for a film that runs at the
close of the Holocaust Memorial
Museum’s permanent exhibi-
tion. (Mrs. Klein was appointed
to the museum’s governing coun-
cil by President Bill Clinton.)
They were also invited to speak
at Columbine High School, in the
wake of the 1999 mass shooting
that left more than a dozen
people dead.
“My parents’ motto was ‘pain
should not be wasted,’ ” their son
James said in an email, “and they
used that as a motivating force
for their life’s work.” The Gerda
and Kurt Klein Foundation was
founded in the 1990s to promote
their message of tolerance, and
Mrs. Klein later partnered with
one of her granddaughters to
create Citizenship Counts, a
schools-based civics program
that promotes “the benefits of
living in a diverse, inclusive and
democratic country.”
Kurt Klein died in 2002. Survi-
vors include their three children,
Vivian Ullman of Paradise Valley,
Ariz., Leslie Simon of Las Vegas
and James Klein of Chevy Chase,
Md.; eight grandchildren; and 18
great-grandchildren.
“For her family, her greatest
achievement is that somehow she
and our father managed to
emerge from the crucible of the
Holocaust and create an abso-
lutely normal life for themselves
and their children,” James said.
“How people who experienced
what they did and were nonethe-
less able to establish that normal-
cy is, to us, truly remarkable.”BY TOM JACKMANPamela A. Smith, who was
named chief of the U.S. Park
Police in February of last year,
abruptly retired Friday after 24
years in the department. No rea-
son was given for her departure.
Smith, 54, had been a longtime
commander in the department
and was the first Black woman to
lead the agency in its 231-year
history. She had previously been
the first woman to lead the Park
Police’s New York field office, and
she had been deputy chief of the
Homeland Security Division and
the Field Operations Division.
Park Police officers are stationed
in federal parks in and around the
District, New York City and San
Francisco.
When Smith took the job, she
inherited a troubled department,
with issues that had been becom-
ing increasingly public in recent
months. It was unclear Friday
night how much progress had
been made in addressing these
issues.
In February, the Interior De-
partment’s inspector general is-
sued a harsh report on the state of
the Park Police’s dispatch center
in southeast Washington, which
it said police commanders had
ignored for years. The report said
automated emergency alarms are
sent to a room separate from the
dispatchers that they cannot
hear, allowing a flood at Arling-
ton National Cemetery to go un-
addressed; that dispatchers are
poorly trained and too few in
number; and that mold and bird
droppings are rampant in the
building.
And on Wednesday, the Park
Police officers’ union filed a five-
page complaint with the inspec-
tor general saying the agency was
“engaged in gross negligence and
mismanagement at great risk to
the safety of the public due to
understaffing of sworn person-
nel.” The Fraternal Order of Po-
lice’s Park Police Labor Commit-
tee said staffing for the three field
offices had dropped from about
639 officers to 494 officers, lower
than the force size in 1975.
The complaint said that Smith
decided in February to cancel
certain days off “to fill the mas-
sive holes in even bare minimum
law enforcement coverage....
Under the current staffing sys-
tem, every officer is basically on
call, all the time and there is no
end in sight.” The complaint,
signed by union chairman Ken-
neth Spencer, said the San Fran-cisco office, which mainly pro-
tects the Presidio park, is down to
33 officers from a previous staff-
ing of 83.
Then on Thursday, the union
filed a 25-page grievance with
Smith, citing the dispatch center
problems and the understaffing
as matters that put officers in
danger. “The Department of In-
terior/National Park Service does
not give our current Chief, Pam-
ela Smith, the tools she needs.”
the grievance says, “to make the
USPP successful and provide
quality law enforcement service
to the public in San Francisco,
New York, and the Washington
Metropolitan Area.”
Spencer was surprised by the
Friday evening announcement.
“This is news to us,” Spencer said.
“It’s unfortunate because we were
hoping to accomplish some
things together, with her being a
former union executive. But un-
fortunately that’s not going to
happen now, so we wish her well
in whatever her future endeavors
are.”
Smith did not respond to an
email Friday seeking comment.
She sent an email to the depart-
ment at 5:30 p.m. Friday an-
nouncing her departure, without
giving a reason. “I look forward toseeing many of you in the coming
weeks as I cap off an extraordi-
nary career,” Smith wrote.
Smith’s announcement said
her resignation would be effective
April 30.
Deputy Chief Christopher
Stock was appointed interim
chief.
When Smith was appointed
last year, she said she was going to
implement body cameras for the
department, which had no cam-
eras in its cars or on its officers.
Last May, Smith announced that
San Francisco officers would be-
gin wearing such cameras by the
end of 2021. Spencer said Friday
that they are now wearing them.
The only other federal officers
that currently use body cameras
are rangers in the National Park
Service and officers in the Fish
and Wildlife Service, according to
testimony and information gath-
ered by the House Natural Re-
sources Committee last fall. The
Justice Department — with more
than 43,000 sworn agents in the
FBI; the Drug Enforcement Ad-
ministration; the Bureau of Alco-
hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo-
sives; and the Marshals Service —
does not use body or in-car cam-
eras.
Smith followed two chiefs withsomewhat stormy tenures. She
replaced Robert D. MacLean, who
was promoted in August 2019 to
head the Interior Department’s
Office of Law Enforcement and
Security, and who maintained a
strict silence over the 2017 slaying
of unarmed motorist Bijan
Ghaisar by two Park Police offi-
cers in Fairfax County. MacLean
refused to release any informa-
tion about the shooting, or ad-
dress the Ghaisar family’s allega-
tions of poor treatment by his
officers while trying to see
Ghaisar as he lay in a coma.
In a news conference after she
was appointed, Smith said that
“one of my first priorities as chief
of police is to be briefed as to what
occurred,” and that she was “cer-
tainly looking forward to provid-
ing a response.” But the Ghaisars
said they never heard from her.
In November, the Interior De-
partment served notice on the
officers involved, Lucas Vinyard
and Alejandro Amaya, that they
would be fired within 30 days.
Smith told officers in roll-call
meetings that she was not con-
sulted on the move, according to
emails obtained by The Washing-
ton Post, and that she supported
the union’s opposition to the
move. A lawyer for the officersnoted that firing the officers with-
out due process violated multiple
aspects of their union contract,
and the officers remain on the
department, on administrative
leave with pay. Manslaughter
charges against them, filed in
2020, were dismissed by a federal
judge in October, but Fairfax
prosecutors are appealing that.
Acting Chief Gregory Mona-
han served after MacLean and
oversaw the Park Police’s actions
as they aggressively pushed pro-
testers out of Lafayette Square on
June 1, 2020, in advance of a visit
to St. John’s Church by President
Donald Trump for a photo oppor-
tunity. Monahan testified before
Congress, and an inspector gener-
al’s report later confirmed, that
the Park Police did not act on
Trump’s behalf, but instead were
moving to expand a protective
perimeter for officers in the park.
Monahan also confirmed that
the Park Police had no recordings
of its communications on that
day, and that a newly purchased
radio system had not been prop-
erly configured to record trans-
missions. The officers in the
Ghaisar case have said they were
riding together the night of the
shooting because of problems
with the radio system.THE REGION
Park Police chief abruptly retires after a year on the job, 24 on the force
June 1942, with her parents sent
to die at Auschwitz and the
younger, able-bodied Mrs. Klein
transported to the Gross-Rosen
concentration camp system.
She spent much of the next
three years at textile factories,
where she was forced to weave
cloth for the German army. She
and the other girls and women
were subject to random killings,
beatings, disfigurement and days
without food. Toward the end of
the war, with an Allied victory at
hand, she and roughly 2,000 oth-
ers were sent on a three-month
march from the Polish-German
border to southern Czechoslova-
kia. About 120 of the women
survived, according to Mrs. Klein,
who credited her endurance in
part to a pair of ski boots that her
father had insisted she take with
her before he was deported.
The women were liberated at a
factory building in the town of
Volary, discovered by a group of
U.S. soldiers that included Kurt
Klein, then a 24-year-old first lieu-
tenant. “He looked to me like a
God,” Mrs. Klein later said, recall-
ing the moment when her future
husband “asked if he could see the
other ladies,” then “held the door
for me.”
“In that moment,” she told the
Philadelphia Inquirer, “my hu-
manity was restored.”
In an oral history with the
Holocaust Memorial Museum,
Kurt recalled that Mrs. Klein led
him to a group of emaciated
women “scattered over the floor
on scraps of straw,” then “made
sort of a sweeping gesture over
this scene of devastation” andstayed outside when Mrs. Klein
and her family were forced to
move into their basement, as a
non-Jewish family took over the
rooms upstairs. There was the
intimidating, bulldog-faced Ger-
man supervisor who once saved
her life, whisking her out of the
infirmary after an SS inspector
began sending sick patients to
the gas chambers. And there was
the raspberry — slightly bruised
— that her friend Ilse found in a
gutter on the way to a factory,
then kept in her pocket and gave
to Mrs. Klein even though both
women were starving.
For Mrs. Klein, the raspberry
was a reminder that love and
friendship could endure even in
moments of hopelessness and de-
spair, and could serve as a “sus-
taining force” when survival
seemed impossible. “Imagine a
world in which your entire posses-
sion is one raspberry,” she often
said, “and you give it to your
friend.”
Gerda Weissmann was born in
Bielsko, Poland, on May 8, 1924.
Her mother was a homemaker,
and her father was a textile man-
ufacturing executive at a compa-
ny that specialized in furs. Pets
scurried through the home, vio-
lets grew in the garden and on
Sept. 1, 1939, Nazi fighter planes
began to roar overhead.
Within three days, the German
army had taken the city. A sign
was posted outside the family’s
garden — “No dogs or Jews” —
and Mrs. Klein’s brother was sent
to a forced-labor camp. She and
her parents were moved to a
ghetto before being separated inBY HARRISON SMITHWhen Gerda Weissmann Klein
was liberated by American sol-
diers in May 1945, one day short
of her 21st birthday, she weighed
68 pounds, had a shock of prema-
turely gray hair and had not
bathed in three years. Her par-
ents and only sibling were among
the 6 million Jews murdered in
the Holocaust, and her best
friend had died in her arms the
previous week during a 350-mile
death march.
The Nazi regime and its collab-
orators had taken “all but my life,”
as Mrs. Klein later put it in the
title of a 1957 memoir. But she
went on to spread a message of
hope and tolerance, marrying
one of her liberators and lectur-
ing to audiences around the
world with her husband, Kurt
Klein, a German Jew who had
immigrated to the United States
as a teenager and returned to
Europe as an Army intelligence
officer.
Partnering with HBO and the
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Mu-
seum, Mrs. Klein turned her
memoir into a 1995 film, “One
Survivor Remembers,” which
won the Academy Award for best
documentary short and the
Emmy Award for outstanding
informational special. Taking the
lectern at the Oscars, she deliv-
ered one of the ceremony’s most
stirring acceptance speeches, re-
calling that during six years of
persecution and captivity, “win-
ning meant a crust of bread and
to live another day.”
“Since the blessed day of my
liberation I have asked the ques-
tion, ‘Why am I here?’ ” she said.
“I am no better. In my mind’s eye I
see those years and days and
those who never lived to see the
magic of a boring evening at
home. On their behalf I wish to
thank you for honoring their
memory, and you cannot do it in
any better way than when you
return to your homes tonight to
realize that each of you who know
the joy of freedom are winners.”
Recognizing her decades of
advocacy and education efforts,
President Barack Obama award-
ed her the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the nation’s highest ci-
vilian honor, in 2011. Mrs. Klein
continued lecturing until a few
years ago, and was 97 when she
died April 3 at her home in
Phoenix. Her daughter Vivian
Ullman confirmed the death but
did not give a cause.
In its detail and specificity,
Mrs. Klein’s testimony — like that
of survivors and victims such as
Anne Frank — became a crucial
resource for young people and
others trying to understand the
horrors of the Holocaust.
“She wanted to empower
young people to make a differ-
ence,” said Sara J. Bloomfield,
director of the Holocaust Memo-
rial Museum, who said that in
telling her story to new genera-
tions, Mrs. Klein was “not only
honoring the past but educating
the future.”
Speaking extemporaneously,
with her composure rarely crack-
ing, Mrs. Klein brought forth
memories that were still vivid
more than seven decades later.
There was the family cat that
GERDA WEISSMANN KLEIN, 97
Holocaust survivor turned to advocacy, furthering education
PAT SHANNAHAN/THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gerda Weissman Klein holds a photo of her late husband, Kurt Klein, who was among a group of U.S. soldiers who rescued her from the
Gross-Rosen concentration camp system in 1945.BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
President Barack Obama presents Mrs. Klein with the Presidential
Medal of Freedom in 2011 for her advocacy work.obituaries