Gerald Kaiser papers

Identifier
irn30471
Language of Description
English
Alt. Identifiers
  • 2001.59.1
Level of Description
Item
Languages
  • Polish
Source
EHRI Partner

Extent and Medium

folder

1

Creator(s)

Biographical History

Gerald Kaiser was born on January 1, 1940 in Kielce, Poland. In 1941 the Gestapo took his family to a labor camp. Gerald, a small boy at the time, was smuggled out of the camp. Stanislaw, Jadwiga (Wanda), Janusz, and Krystyna Wlodek, and Franciszek, Teofila, and Aurelia Kowalik, two Polish Catholic families, saved his life from Nazi extermination. After Jadwiga Wlodek was taken to Auschwitz, her children moved Gerald (Jurek) to the Kowalik family in another village. In 1942, the Gestapo killed Bernard Kaiser, Gerald's father, in the labor camp. Jadwiga Wlodek died in Auschwitz in 1943. Sylvia Kaiser (Hirschler), Gerald's mother, survived. After liberation in 1945, she found Gerald at the Kowalik family's house. Mother and son went to Germany where they lived for a few years in the displaced persons camp at Bergen-Belsen. Finally they immigrated to the United States. From the United States, Gerald Kaiser contacted the people who saved his life: Krystyna and Janusz Wlodek and Aurelia Rudyk (Kowalik). Yad Vashem honored these families with recognition as Righteous Among the Nations in 1986. Kaiser planted trees for them. He maintained regular contact with the surviving members of these families. In the summer of 1993 they all met in Warsaw, Poland, at the conference sponsored by the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers : "Can Indifference Kill?"

Archival History

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Acquisition

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Gerald Kaiser

Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Professor Gerald Kaiser donated the Gerald Kaiser papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2001.

Scope and Content

The Gerald Kaiser papers consist of two photographs of Teofila Kowalik, a Polish woman, who hid Gerald Kaiser for three years in the village of Przylęk, Poland; one letter with envelope, written by Cesia Kaiser (née Zaks) in Tel Aviv, Israel to Stanislaw Wlodek, who hid Gerald Kaiser during the Holocaust, in Deszno, Poland; and one letter written by Tola Zaks, Gerald Kaiser’s maternal aunt in the United States, to Stanislaw Wlodek in Deszno, Poland.

System of Arrangement

The Gerald Kaiser papers is arranged in a single series.

People

Subjects

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.