United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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"
folder 1
The Gerald Kaiser papers is arranged in a single series.
The Gerald Kaiser papers consist of three photographs. The first depicts Gerald Kaiser (born Jurek Kaiser), age of seven months, in the Kielce ghetto, Kielce, Poland, August 13, 1940, and dedicated to Aunt Geniusia from Jehuda (Jurek). The second photograph is a family portrait of Bernard Kaiser and Cesia Kaiser, with their son, Jurek Kaiser (later Gerald Kaiser) in the Kielce ghetto, Kielce, Poland, August 1940. The third is a photograph of Benard Kaiser holding his son, Jurek Kaiser, while Cesia Kaiser looks on, Kielce ghetto, Kielce, Poland, October 1940.
Gerald Kaiser papers