Gerda was an only child of Jewish parents. They lived in Breslau, a large industrial city on the Oder River. Before World War II, Breslau's Jewish community was the third largest in Germany. Her father worked as a salesman for a large hardware and building materials company. Gerda attended public school until age 9 when she was admitted to a Catholic girls' school.

1933-39: I walked through the city to see the aftermath of a pogrom. The windows of Jewish shops had been shattered. A torched synagogue continued to smolder. I begged my parents to leave Germany. Months later, they decided we should flee. We got visas to Cuba and left from Hamburg aboard the ship St. Louis on May 13, 1939. Arriving in Cuba on the 27th, we were told our visas were invalid. Denied entry, we had to return to Europe.

1940-44: Disguised as farm women, my mother and I drove a hay wagon past the German border patrol to a farm on the French-Swiss border. We walked down a small ravine, crossed a stream and then slipped under a barbed-wire fence that marked the official border. But we were apprehended by Swiss border guards and held overnight. The next day, we were put on a train with other refugees. No one told us where we were going or what was going to happen to us.

Gerda was interned in a refugee camp in Switzerland for two years, and then worked in Bern in a blouse factory until the end of the war. She emigrated to the United States in 1949.

Describes the mood of passengers on the "St. Louis" after they were …
Personal stories

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Gerda Blachmann