April 11, 1914—August 10, 2012
Gerda Buchheim Haas died in Tacoma on Friday, August 10, 2012. Born April 11, 1914 in Berlin, Germany into a large extended family, Gerda joined her sister Hilde, her father Meier Buchheim — a kosher butcher — her mother Paula Rosenthal and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. As a young woman she wanted to teach, but edicts not allowing Jews in university prevented that. Married to Hans Haas in Berlin 1935, she bore her only child Henry Haas in April 1938. The Nazi government’s increasingly anti-Semitic edicts and events in the 1930s caused Gerda and her husband, with their infant son Henry, to flee Berlin in July 1938, attempting to find refuge elsewhere in Europe. Constantly in jeopardy, and on the run from Berlin to Prague, Czechoslovakia, on to Nyitra, Slovakia, then on to Alassio, Italy, she managed finally in June of 1939 to smuggle herself and her son into France illegally. Once safely in Paris with relatives, she was reunited with her husband Hans, who had arrived illegally from Holland. Gerda and her husband managed to book passage on a ship leaving from Marseilles in July 1939 to Shanghai, China, a city that did not require a visa for entry. Arriving in Shanghai on August 5, 1939 in stifling summer heat, Gerda and her family encountered vast language, cultural, economic, physical, and housing issues. These were somewhat ameliorated by her sister and mother-in-law, who had arrived a few months earlier.
In December 1941 the Japanese army occupied the International Settlement of Shanghai. Once in charge of this international area of the city, the Nazi government pressured the Japanese government to exterminate the Jewish refugees. The Japanese skillfully and diplomatically refused, reaching a compromise with the Nazis in 1943, by interning all 18,000 Jewish refugees into Hongkou (a Shanghai slum neighborhood, where Gerda and her family had already lived in just one room since their arrival) and declaring all the Jews to be stateless refugees. Very strict restrictions of movement were imposed by the Japanese army and this area became a ghetto without walls into which the entire Jewish refugee population in Shanghai had to live, co-existing with the poorer Chinese. Despite all the challenges and frightful living conditions, Gerda and her husband endured their time in Shanghai, working at whatever they could find to help their family survive. Upon the end of WWII and the discovery of the murder of her parents and virtually her entire family in Germany by the Nazis, Gerda and her husband Hans (John) decided not to return to Germany but to build a new life for themselves elsewhere.
With the help of the Hebrew Immigration Assistance Society (HIAS), the family sailed to San Francisco on a troop ship. With $90 between them, the family began an eight-year acclimation process, teaching themselves English by making themselves read the newspaper, talking to as many English-speaking Americans as possible, and working at an extensive variety of jobs. They started their new life in Portland, Ore., finally settling in Tacoma in 1955, where the family rebuilt and reestablished their lives with a greater sense of permanency. Gerda worked at various odd jobs in Tacoma. Eventually she and her husband established a small business — the Discount Mart — in downtown Tacoma on the corner of South 13th and Broadway.
Later in life, she realized her early ambition of teaching children by becoming a teacher’s aide in the Tacoma School District, principally at the old Ruston school. She loved every single day she worked in that position. For many years at the invitation of teachers, she shared her life story with Pierce County elementary and middle school classes, hoping it would serve as a lesson in the evils and consequences of prejudice and hate.
Once in America, Gerda’s priority was her family, and every Friday night for decades the family celebrated Shabbat dinner at her home, and that pleasant evening was eventually taken over by her son Henry and his wife, with Gerda coming to their home for Shabbat dinner up until her death. Gerda’s earlier and young life, as she had known it, had been torn from her and shattered by evil ideologues. She had lived from day to day just trying to survive with her baby Henry.
The family’s arrival in America was a rebirth for her… but she was really only in the labor stage until her grandchildren were born. However, she blossomed beyond belief when her great-grandchildren Sarah Haas and Jacob, Sam, and Sophie Isaac were born and we could see finally that she was at peace with herself.
Preceded in death by her former husband John, her sister Hilde, and her grandson-in-law Joshua Bondi Isaac, she is survived by her son Henry, her “daughter” Kate Fraser Haas (Henry’s wife), three beloved grandchildren David, Susan, and Kimberly, and four “wonderful” great-grandchildren. She was a member of Temple Beth El in Tacoma.
Should you care to make a gift in her memory, please consider the Religious School Fund at Temple Beth El, Tacoma, or the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center in Seattle. Graveside services were held at the Home of Peace Cemetery in Lakewood.
Gerda Haas
