Gerda Evening Getzler was fourteen or sixteen years old when she was admitted to the Neu-Isenburg Home of the Jewish Women's Association. In some lists of the home she is recorded as “Zögling” ("Pupil") in others as a student. Maybe she completed an internship in “Heim Isenburg,” either to be trained for a housekeeper or baby care/nanny.

Gerda was likely the daughter of unmarried Berta Evening, born on April 17, 1893, in Wlonow (Galicia). She had two younger daughters, the twins Paula Minna and Augusta (Guste), born on October 9, 1926. Berta Abend died when their children were minors, probably before 1938. His father, recorded in the files as Julius Getzler, could be the same as Judah Getzler, born on July 8, 1892, in Dukla (Galicia), residing in Düsseldorf. He was probably deported in 1938 from Germany because he was a Polish citizen. Until the summer of 1939 Judah Getzler was interned in Bentschen (Zbaszyn). Then his track is lost.

Gerda Abend-Getzler enlisted from Neu-Isenburg to Cologne in August 1938. For what reason and where she was in Cologne, has not yet been explored. According to an acquaintance (Database Yad Vashem), Gerda Abend-Getzler was deported to Poland in 1942.

Gerda's sisters, Paula and Guste were housed at an orphanage in Dinslaken. After the children had been expelled from the organization during the November pogrom in 1938, they were rescued via Cologne to the Netherlands, where they last lived with relatives. After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht on the neutral Netherlands, the two sixteen-year-old girls were deported and murdered in the concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz.

Sources: Stadtarchiv Neu-Isenburg; Yad Vashem – The central database of shoah victim's names

The Memorial book entry has been completed with the support of Miriam Keesing.: