Yes, Gerda is my first reader. Reading my book for 2026, she needed 2 boxes of Kleenex. I hope it wasn’t just to mop up spilled Cokes. | Dean Koontz

Gerda Weissmann Klein was one of the few Jewish women who survived The Death March to Volary in 1945. Of the approximately 1,300 women forced to march 800 KM over 106 days, only some 350 survived. In Klein's survivor testimony video below, she describes the first moments of liberation, and recalls her experience meeting a US Army officer for the first time: "I was looking at him in incredible awe and disbelief, that I was looking at someone who fought for us... So I looked at him and said: 'We a