My Voice: Gerda Rothberg

Gerda Rothberg was born in 1926 in Lötzen. She had a happy childhood, which was shattered by the Nazi rise to power. Following her father’s detention after Kristallnacht and the introduction of many anti-Jewish regulations, her family sought to flee. Gerda and her two sisters escaped to England via the Kindertransport in June 1939, while her parents waited for her father’s identity documentation to arrive.

Gerda lived in Liverpool for a few years and then moved to a hostel in Manchester. She found employment in dressmaking, following in the footsteps of her father who was a tailor, and started to enjoy life again. She married Nat in 1949 and together they had three children. Gerda later discovered that her parents perished in Theresienstadt.

Gerda’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.