The firstborn
Or: hidden by ivy It began with a picture: a family gathering around a table in the garden. One man, three women and a girl named Gerda. An unusual picture, the five persons are identified…
Sternlager
Hermann Kleeblatt died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, in its section named Sternlager, ‘Star Camp’. He was seventy years of age and the last of his family to fall prey to the Nazis. All were dead:…
Bald heads
A mysterious picture from the family archives. Of only one of the ten individuals the identity is known. At the back in German handwriting the words ‘Neuenahr, Summer 1924’. Second from the left is my…
House arrest
Vijfenzeventig jaren na de bevrijding van mijn geboorteplaats Almelo schrijf ik over de onderduik van mijn ouders en zoveel andere Joodse Almeloërs. Door de bevrijding van de stad door Canadese troepen kwam daaraan na ruim twee-en-een-half jaar een eind.
Meet Kurt Ikenberg
Meet Kurt Ikenberg, distant relative of the same generation as I. He was born six years prior to me. I’ve known him for eight years although he was only three years of age when he…
Moving pictures
‘GenTalk’ at the Famillement conference, 3 June 2018 in Leeuwarden, The NetherlandsTranslated from Dutch by the author What is special about Jewish genealogists and writers on family history? To their non-Jewish colleagues, having an extended…
All that remains…
All that remains: four pictures of the De Jonge family that lived in Groningen (Netherlands) at Folkingedwarsstraat 5. Parents, two children and a son-in-law and grandchild Eva born in February 1942, all murdered in Auschwitz.…
Five years in the Internet
A happy occasion: five years ago today, this trilingual website went on-line. During this period 24 stories have been published in English, 21 in Dutch and 8 in German. Thus the histories of the Löwenhardt,…
Isaac de Leeuw, for kosher meat
Surprising ads in Holland’s oldest weekly, the NIW (New Jewish Weekly, founded in 1865 and still going strong today). They tell me that from 1904 or earlier my great-grandfather Isaac de Leeuw Az. ((Az., Abrahamszoon,…
