Remembering Clara Knopfler

1927 – 2024

There are people we meet who pass through our lives, and then there are those whose presence changes us in ways we never could have anticipated.  Knowing Clara Knopfler was one of the greatest gifts of my life.

Not because of her extraordinary story alone, though it was extraordinary, nor because of what she survived, though her resilience remains almost beyond comprehension. But truly, because of who she was, a woman who carried the weight of history with grace, humility, humor, and a steadfast commitment to ensuring that future generations would never forget.

To know Clara was to be reminded that courage does not always arrive with fanfare.  Sometimes it arrives quietly, in the form of a life well lived, a story generously shared, and a determination to find meaning long after unimaginable loss.

Some people leave an impression on others, while others leave a legacy that lasts a lifetime.

Clara Knopfler left both!

At ninety-seven, Clara carried nearly a century of history within her—a history marked by unimaginable suffering, remarkable resilience, and an unwavering ability to find meaning long after many would have surrendered to bitterness. Yet what struck me most about Clara was not simply what she survived. It was how she lived afterward. How she chose to remember, to share, and to ensure that others would not overlook.

Clara and her mother survived Auschwitz and two labor camps, one in Riga, Latvia, and another near Stutthof, Poland, before enduring an excruciating three-month walk from what is now modern-day Poland back to their village in Transylvania, Romania. They did so without maps or compasses, relying solely on directions and the mercy of strangers they met along the way.

When they finally arrived home, Clara was still wearing the sturdy leather shoes her father, a shoemaker, had made for her. Inside their house, they found only mattresses and her brother Zoltan’s piano. Later, Clara learned that Zoltan had been shot in front of their father after refusing to perform labor that would damage the hands he used to play the piano. Her father survived both the camps and his son’s murder, only to die of typhoid fever while walking home in May 1945.

Years ago, I stood within the barbed-wire fences of Auschwitz as a fresh dusting of snow blanketed the ground, struggling to grasp the scale of human cruelty that had unfolded there. Like so many visitors, I left with a profound sense of grief and disbelief, wondering how such darkness could have existed within humanity.

Recently, I found myself in Riga, Latvia, walking through the Kaiserwald forest and memorial site connected to the concentration camps where Clara and her mother had been imprisoned. There, they were forced to hand-cut batteries with knives, removing the soft interior material that would later be used to manufacture gunpowder, the second of three camps they endured together.

As I passed beneath the stone archway, the ground seemed to groan under the weight of memory. In the distance, a faint heartbeat echoed from a speaker system hidden among the trees.

This experience felt different, and I am still processing it. Perhaps because this time I was not walking through history alone. I was walking through a story I knew, one with a face, a voice, and a name.

Clara’s.

As I moved through the quiet forest, I found myself thinking not only of survival but also of presence. Her steadfast, selfless mother could not stop what was unfolding around them. She could not shield Clara from the horrors of war, starvation, fear, or loss. She could not change the machinery of hatred that had engulfed Europe. Yet she stayed alive and fought for her daughter. Despite conditions that stripped away dignity, severed identity, and extinguished hope, mother and daughter remained together.

In one of the stories Clara shared during a Living Legacies salon gathering at my home shortly after we met, she spoke about her eighteenth birthday while imprisoned in the camps. Nearly thirty women sat in silence, many in tears, as she recounted the memory.

A birthday under circumstances where survival itself was uncertain, where hunger was constant and every scrap of food mattered. Yet somehow, her mother saved portions of her own one-piece-a-day bread ration for three days to create a layered birthday cake for her daughter. 

I still remember Clara’s words: “It was the greatest present of my life.”

Her mother forfeited her own nourishment, piece by piece, day after day, until she had enough to fashion a small birthday cake. I have thought about that story often, not because of the bread itself but for what it represented. In a place built to dehumanize, a mother made a different choice. She chose to preserve her daughter’s sense of worth, belonging, and love. 

She could not offer safety or certainty, nor could she promise there would be another birthday, but she could offer that moment. A small act of tenderness amid brutality, a reminder that Clara was still her daughter, worthy of celebration and love.

The older I become, the more extraordinary that gesture feels. It truly brings me to tears. The cake was never really about bread. It was about sacrifice, a mother placing her daughter’s spirit above her own immediate needs and choosing to love even when fear would have been understandable. Choosing generosity when scarcity surrounded them is powerful, as is taking the chance on hope when hope made little logical sense in that moment of pure survival.

Standing in that dense wooded area outside Riga, I realized that history is never truly about dates, statistics, or monuments. It is about people. It is about mothers and daughters. It is about ordinary individuals forced into extraordinary circumstances and the choices they make. The camps reveal the worst of what human beings can do to one another.

Clara and her mother’s story reveals something else entirely. It shows what human beings are capable of holding onto. Love. Devotion. Presence. The refusal to let darkness have the final word. Perhaps that is what we can take away from Clara’s story all these years later.

There is an obligation to remember.

To remember what happened when humanity lost its way. To remember the millions who did not survive. To remember that freedom, dignity, and human rights are never guaranteed simply because we wish them to be. But I believe Clara’s story leaves us with something more personal as well. It teaches us that even in the darkest imaginable circumstances, we still have the power to choose who we will be. Her mother could have eaten every morsel of bread herself. No one would have blamed her. Survival demanded impossible decisions. Instead, she made a different choice. A deliberate choice to preserve joy, dignity, and love.

In a place where all three were under constant attack, that small birthday cake was far more than bread. It was a declaration that cruelty would not define them, that hardship would not extinguish tenderness, and that even in a world intent on reducing people to numbers, a mother could still look at her daughter and see someone worthy of celebration.

Perhaps that is what has stayed with me the most. Not merely Clara and her mother’s survival, which was nothing short of remarkable and left me speechless and gobsmacked, but the extraordinary devotion that surrounded it. The knowledge that, through starvation, fear, displacement, and uncertainty, she and her mother had one another… what a gift that was.

As a mother myself, I often return to that lesson. Not the lesson of survival, but the lesson of presence. Clara’s story is a quiet reminder that some of the deepest expressions of motherhood are found in devotion, in showing up consistently, and in helping our children become good humans, while never doubting that they are deeply loved.

Their story reminds me that a mother’s love can become the emotional centerpiece of a life. Not because it shields us from suffering, but because it gives us something suffering cannot take away. Clara carried that love with her long after the camps and the war had ended.

I remain in awe when I think of their wartime survival—a mother and daughter who endured Auschwitz, two labor camps, and an impossible journey home.

She later chronicled those experiences in her memoir, I Am Still Here: My Mother’s Voice. Through the stories she shared, including her chapter in S.H.E. Share Heal Empower, Volume One, she passed that love and education on to the rest of us. I know she passed it on to me. As I walked through those forests in Latvia, I felt free to leave.

Clara and her mother did not. Many others never made it out alive. I felt the weight of history and heartbreak, but I felt something else as well…gratitude.

Gratitude for Clara’s willingness to bear witness. Gratitude for her mother’s courage. Gratitude for the privilege of having known her, and, perhaps most of all, gratitude for the freedom I so often take for granted.

The freedom to move through the world. The freedom to tell our stories. The freedom to gather with those we love. The freedom to choose how we live.

Some legacies are built on accomplishments. Others are built on endurance. Clara’s was built on something even rarer.

The decision to keep choosing love when every reason existed not to. They could take away freedom. They could take possessions. They could take homes, names, certainty, and safety. They could separate families, strip away dignity, and attempt to erase identity itself.

But they could not take the love between a mother and daughter. They could not take a woman saving pieces of her own bread so her daughter could have a birthday cake. They could not take the devotion that chose joy despite despair. They could not take the dignity preserved through small acts of tenderness. And lastly, they could not take the hope carried between two people determined to remain human in a world that had forgotten how.

That is what endured and remained.

That is the legacy Clara entrusted to the rest of us. Not simply the obligation to remember what happened, but the responsibility to remember what endured.

May we never forget.

Clara’s Story, In Her Own Words

The following excerpt is adapted from Chapter Six of S.H.E. Share Heal Empower, Volume One, and from Clara Knopfler’s memoir, I Am Still Here: My Mother’s Voice.

January 19, 1945, brought the usual roll call and a lesson in sacrifice.

At that time, Mama seemed weaker than usual. She slowly pulled out a package wrapped in newspaper and, in a low murmur, said, “Happy 18th birthday, my darling.”

There in front of my listless eyes were three portions of bread put together with coatings of margarine.

My mother had not eaten her one-piece-a-day portion for three full days to make me a layered birthday cake.

It was the greatest present of my life.

Years later, I came to understand that the cake was never really about bread. It was about love.

Throughout Auschwitz, Riga, Stutthof, and the long walk home, it was always Mama and me.

We lost thirty-seven members of our family. We lost our home, our possessions, our certainty, and the world we once knew, but we never lost each other.

People often ask me how I survived.

The answer is simple. I survived because my mother stayed by my side.

She taught me that even when everything else is taken away, we still have the power to choose kindness, dignity, hope, and love.

That is why I share my story.

Please tell it to your children and tell them to tell it to theirs. Because the moment we stop remembering is the moment we risk forgetting what it means to be human.