Gerda Martel, who witnessed rise of Nazis, dies at 101

Gerda Martel escaped from Nazi Germany as it intensified its persecution of the Jewish people, settling in the United States and later living for two decades in Spain's Canary Islands.

Martel died Nov. 14 in Minneapolis, where she'd spent the past 12 years. She was 101.

She was born in Berlin, the daughter of Karl Freund, a prominent cinematographer, whose works included "Metropolis," a landmark 1927 German science fiction film. Freund and Gerda's mother, Susette, divorced when she was just 2.

Gerda Freund was raised by her mother near the Kurfurstendamm, a famous boulevard in Berlin. She lived a charmed life there — until Adolf Hitler's rise, said her son Rod Martel of Minneapolis.

"Her whole world fell apart," he said.

She and her family were assimilated Jews, considering themselves to be both German and Jewish. In her diary, she wrestled with the Nazis' ascent to power in 1933.

"At the occasion of Hitler's speech," she wrote in November of that year, "I became quite conscious of the fact that I must have a 'Vaterland' and I really do consider Germany as my 'fatherland.' … When I travel abroad, I shall always say I am a German. Yet here in Germany, I am considered a foreigner!"

Gerda, after landing in Los Angeles, was reunited with her German boyfriend, Ernest Egon Martel, who had fled to Cuba to escape the Nazis. They moved to Chicago, where she worked as a secretary at companies needing bilingual speakers. After 20 years of marriage, they divorced.

In her 60s, Martel began a life of new adventures. She went for a time to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, determined to learn Spanish. In the mid-1980s, she took a vacation with some German friends in the Canary Islands off the coast of northwest Africa.

"She liked it so much she stayed," Rod Martel said. "She lived in the moment; that was her strength."

For 20 years, Martel lived on Tenerife — the largest of the Canary Islands — in an apartment near the sea. In 2005, by then nearly 90, she moved to Minneapolis, settling at the Kenwood Isles Condominiums. She could often be seen walking her cat, Snooky, in a special stroller through Uptown.

After a fall in 2011, Martel began suffering from dementia, though she maintained a good quality of life, Rod Martel said. In her last years, she took particular pleasure in watching "I Love Lucy," the classic 1950s sitcom.

She would watch hours of "I Love Lucy" episodes, always remarking when the credits rolled, "look, there's Karl Freund."

Martel was preceded in death by a daughter, Diane Downey. In addition to her son Rod, she is survived by another son, Les; four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. Services have been held.