Eva Irene Oettinger studied from May 1937 to April 1938 at the Home of the Jewish Women’s Association in Neu-Isenburg. She came from a family who had been living in the Donube town of Riedlingen, Germany, for several generations (for the following, see "Knüppel"). Her parents, Herbert and Caroline (Carrie) Oettinger, had a business in Riedlingen since 1906, selling cotton goods, fabrics, women's and children's clothing, and since November 1919 also household goods.

The family owned a house in Riedlinger Langestraße 8, where Eva Irene and her older brother grew up with her parents. Eva, like all the Jewish children in Riedlingen, attended the Catholic Elementary School, then from 1930 to 1936 the Riedlinger Latin school (Progymnasium). Brother Ernst, who was born in 1911, graduated from the Gymnasium in Ulm after graduating from the Latin school, later studied jurisprudence and promoted. Eve's training, on the other hand, was interrupted by the National Socialist persecution. She left the Latin school in 1936, then from April 1936 to March 1937 she attended the Jewish Women's College of Käthe Künstler in Wolfratshausen, Bavaria. She then received her practical training at the Jewish Women's Home in Neu-Isenburg.

In April 1938, Eva Oettiner left Neu-Isenburg and traveled through Berlin to United Kingdom. In Edinburgh, she worked as a household aid and a childminder in a Scottish family.

In September 1938, Eva's father, Herbert Oettinger, had to sell the textile business that had been in existence for over 65 years, but apparently continued it until November of the year. During the pogrom in 1938 he was taken to a concentration camp, probably to Dachau. Barely two weeks later, the Oettinger family was expelled from Riedlingen. She moved to Stuttgart.

On August 22, 1942, Eva's parents were deported to the Theresienstadt transit and concentration camp, and two years later, on May 16, 1944, from Theresienstadt to the Auschwitz camp, where they were probably murdered immediately after their arrival in the gas chamber. Eva's brother could leave Germany in time.

Eva returned to Germany in the spring of 1939 to marry Adolf Gerson in Stuttgart. Together with her husband she went to France and embarked in Le Havre to the USA. On the "President Roosevelt" she reached New York on September 5, 1939. She lived there until her death in February 1979. Her husband died in 1972.

Source: Christoph Knüppel: "Denn deine Kraft ist in den Schwachen mächtig":