Gertrud “Gedda” Clara Reyersbach, M.D., (1907-1999) grew up in an affluent Jewish family in Oldenburg, Germany. Dr. Reyersbach was a pediatrician specializing in endocrinology and rheumatic diseases. She received her doctorate from the University of Göttingen, Germany, in 1935; that same year, Nazi racial policy effectively defined Jews not by their religion but by ancestral lineage. As a result of these anti-Semitic laws, the Nazis began revoking German citizenship and forbade Jewish doctors from treating non-Jewish patients. Between 1935 and 1937, Dr. Reyersbach worked at the Pharmacological Institute of Göttingen and the Hospital of the Jewish Community in Frankfurt, Germany.

In September of 1936, her uncle Franz Reyersbach (1880-1936) was imprisoned by the Schutzstaffel (the SS) and beaten to death on December 14, 1936, at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Dr. Reyersbach had a close relationship with her uncle, and following the news of his death, she began her escape to the United States. She would not return to Germany until 1985 when Oldenburg city officials organized a reconciliatory event between the city and expelled Jewish citizens. On May 10, 1985, Dr. Reyersbach attended the unveiling of Franz-Reyersbach-Straße, honoring her uncle, the first German Jew from Oldenburg killed by the Nazis.

Dr. Reyersbach arrived in New York on June 1, 1937, but her journey was far from over. It took three years to be recertified as a pediatrician while attaining United States citizenship and persuading immigration officials that she was not a threat to the nation. In 1942, Dr. Reyersbach began her tenure teaching at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, becoming one of the hospital's first female residents. She thrived as a well-respected pediatrician in Boston, retiring at 80.