Columbia High School students sat unusually silent and uncharacteristically still for 40 minutes on Friday as they listened to Vera Emmons tell the story of her mother, Gerda Luner, and often listened to Luner’s own words, as she described her experiences during the Holocaust.

Looking at the picture projected on a large screen of the beautiful young woman their own age — Luner was 17 when the war in Europe ended — it was surely difficult to comprehend how different her teenage years had been from theirs.

By the time that particular photo was taken, Luner’s parents and little sister were dead. Luner had lived in a foster home, journeyed through a foreign country with Nazis always in close pursuit, and spent time in six concentration camps.

Yet Emmons, and Luner, stoically told this story so experiences like Luner’s wouldn’t be lost to time and indifference.

Columbia High School students sat unusually silent and uncharacteristically still for 40 minutes on Friday as they listened to Vera Emmons tell the story of her mother, Gerda Luner, and often listened to Luner’s own words, as she described her experiences during the Holocaust.

Looking at the picture projected on a large screen of the beautiful young woman their own age — Luner was 17 when the war in Europe ended — it was surely difficult to comprehend how different her teenage years had been from theirs.

By the time that particular photo was taken, Luner’s parents and little sister were dead. Luner had lived in a foster home, journeyed through a foreign country with Nazis always in close pursuit, and spent time in six concentration camps.
Yet Emmons, and Luner, stoically told this story so experiences like Luner’s wouldn’t be lost to time and indifference.

“We don’t have enough Holocaust survivors to speak anymore,” Emmons said. “The war ended over 70 years ago.

“Today, as I tell you the story of her life, she will be doing some of that also through some of the video clips you’re going to see.”

Luner was born in Berlin in 1927. She led a happy childhood with her parents and sister, Vera.

“They were very proud to be German, and it never occurred to them that their neighbors would turn against them, would not be there for them,” Emmons said of her mother and grandparents.

Luner described in one video segment where she was when she learned Hitler had been elected head of the German government the same way younger generations can describe where they were when 9/11 took place — and with a similar recognition that the world was suddenly changed.

“I remember the tense days leading up to the election in April 1933. I remember the day of the election. I remember where we were, the exact location in a park not far from where we lived. We were there when the black, white and red (German) flag was brought down and the swastika was raised, and people were just screaming with joy and my parents were there shuttering and subdued. They had not thought, until the last moment, that such a person could really be elected,” Luner recalled.

Soon after, the persecution of Jews began. Luner’s parents tried unsuccessfully to obtain visas to exit Germany to safety, but as that became increasingly unlikely, they did the unthinkable and sent their daughters to live in a foreign country with strangers, hoping they would be far enough away from the grip of the Nazi party to spare their lives.

Gerda and Vera moved to Holland and lived with two Jewish families.

“In May of 1940, the Nazis invade Holland and very quickly take over Holland. So, at this point, my mother is almost 13 and Vera, 11. Vera’s foster parents took her and fled to France, where it was still safer, until the Nazis took over France,” Emmons said.

Emmons’ grandparents thought they had a way out of Europe, so they contacted Vera and had her come back to Berlin. Gerda remained in Holland with her foster family.

“Vera was there with my parents and they were all deported together to Auschwitz in March of 1943,” Emmons said.

“I didn’t realize at the time they were going to be killed. I did realize they were going to be relocated to the east,” Luner remembered. “I didn’t realize the horrendous times they had to suffer in Germany. I didn’t realize that until later.”

Just before her 16th birthday, Luner and her foster family were ordered to report to a train station, then to a concentration camp in Holland.

“Soon after arriving at the concentration camp my mother was lucky to be selected to work for The Philips Electronics Company… Mr. Frits Philips very much wanted to save Jews.”

Similar to the work of Oskar Schindler, Philips employed Jews in special plants, now doing business for the Germans, that he opened in the concentration camps and staffed with several hundred Jewish women, doing any small thing he could to help them, from getting them extra food rations to trying to get them exempted from the most strenuous of work.

“Many women died along the way, but many more lived because they were part of this Philips contingent,” Emmons said. “Always buy Philips light bulbs,” she added, with a small amount of humor to her voice but a seriousness, too.

As part of the Philips crew, Luner would eventually travel to six concentration camps until finally, in 1944, at the age of 17, she was liberated.

She traveled to Chicago within a few years, where she married and had a family. There, she did something many Holocaust survivors didn’t do — she talked about her experiences.

“I’m really lucky that not only did I grow up with a Holocaust survivor, but my mother spoke to me about her experiences,” she said.

She also wrote her memoirs, which Luner’s husband had published after she passed away; and she also sat for a three-hour interview through the Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation in 1995, ensuring her story, and the lessons everyone can take from it, including a group of small town Illinois high school students, lives on.

“Gerda’s Story,” by Gerda Nothmann Luner, is available through Amazon.