Ach Du Lieber…
Remembering Hermann Loewenhardt, 1892-1972 by Pauline and Lucy Loewenhardt, USA, and John Löwenhardt (introduction) Hermann Loewenhardt was 28 years old when on 12 September 1921 he arrived in the USA. He was the youngest of…
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.…
An ordinary boy
MANFRED LOEWENHARDT, 1926 – 1965 Who was Freddie? Why should I care who he was? He was one of the very many cousins of my father Heinz Löwenhardt (1913-1989). Since both lived in Dortmund, Germany,…
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…
Blessing hands in Plettenberg
PLETTENBERG was still on my to-do list. One of the few family related towns I had never visited. It is the birthplace of my great-grandmother Pauline Lennhoff. From Plettenberg in Nordrhine-Westfalia she moved some thirty…
Bridegroom Money
SEARCHING FOR THE CHUPPAH OF MY GRANDPARENTS Cattle-dealer Herman Weijl is a respected man. In the Oldenzaal kehillah, the Jewish community, he is one of the parnassim, members of the governing board. ((Oldenzaal is a…
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,…
Growing up in Westerbork
IN MEMORIAM KURT IKENBERG, 1941-1944 In July 2011 the Red Cross Message correspondence was discovered between Friedel Löwenhardt in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and her sister Klara Ikenberg-Löwenhardt in Westerbork Transit Camp in the occupied Netherlands.…
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.
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,…
Letter to George
In March 2011 the author was contacted by George, a then 87 year old relative who knew the author’s grandparents Adolf and Julia Löwenhardt well before in 1939 he was put on one of the…
Mama’s Peach Jam
Remembering Elizabeth Henrietta Loewenhardt-Ring, 1898-1953 by Pauline M. Loewenhardt My parents – Elizabeth Henrietta, and Herman Joseph – had traditional values that I was disdainful of as a teenager. Their heavy German accents set me…
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…
Ö or œ, d or dt?
The Löwenhardt family name since 1840 Very few Dutchmen carry the family name Löwenhardt. The 1947 census counted six: three people in the province of Gelderland, two in Overijssel and one in Amsterdam. ((The twelfth…
Of four Juliuses
Julius Löwenhardt, Oberhemer 1887 – Mühlhausen (GDR) 1973 Julius Löwenhardt (יוליוס לבנהרט), Sterkrade 1902 – Haifa (Israel) 1947 Julius (Jules) Löwenhardt, Dortmund 1907 – Deventer (Netherlands) 1971 Julius Löwenhardt (Lev-Ary?), Duisburg 1908 – Frankfurt 1960s…
Of hope and despair – and reassurance
The words written on 15 May 1943 are despair in a nutshell: ‘[We’ve] heard nothing from Uncle, [or] Julius’ – Vom Onkel, Julius hoeren nichts. (more…)
Purveyor to the King
Sometimes it’s sheer luck. Someone else has done the work for you, you didn’t even know. The story is waiting for you to find it. (more…)
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:…
The death of Julius
On 15 September 1941 Julius ten Brink and two other Jewish residents were taken away from Denekamp. Just over a month later the news came that he had died in Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.…
The Empire of the Chicken Jew
The Jewish section of the General Cemetery in Dortmund-Wambel, Germany. The lawns are immaculately kept. On a sunny day in July 2010 I find the grave of my great-grandmother Pauline Löwenhardt, buried here in 1933.…
The fatal exchange
T’was some sixty years ago, or thereabouts. I am eight, ten years, twelve perhaps. In the nightstand in my parents’ bedroom I find a mysterious document. It is a stack of carbon copies of typed…
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…
The fruits of revenge
A personal questWritten and published in 2013, republished on this website on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. It took many decades for the quest to mature. In 2010 an event triggered it. The quest…
The Jewish orphanage for Westfalia & Rhineland
Hermann Loewenhardt told his American-born children that he had been in an orphanage in Germany before he emigrated to the United States. It was difficult to believe. Why should he have been in an orphanage?…
The Josef Rosenbaum Letters
Collection of 22 dated letters and a few notes, written in German by Josef Rosenbaum (1877-1943) from his refuge in Amsterdam and sent to his wife Rosalie Rosenbaum-ten Brink and son Walter in New York. The…
The last shoykhet of Oldenzaal – I
Leizer Melamed (Melammet in Dutch civil records) was 32 years of age when in 1903 the Jewish community of Oldenzaal appointed him shammes and shochet (see below). For almost forty years preceding the Holocaust he…
The last shoykhet of Oldenzaal – II
Homage to Leizer Melamed, 1871-1942 Leizer Melamed (Melammet in Dutch civil records) was thirty-two years of age when in 1903 the Jewish community (Kehile) of Oldenzaal appointed him shames and shoykhet (see glossary below). For…
The Löwenhardt Sisters, I
They were born in Oberhemer, Germany, between 1880 and 1885: Clara, Julie and Johanna, the three Löwenhardt sisters. Two of them moved to the Americas and died at an advanced age. Their youth may have…
The Löwenhardt Sisters, II
For the introduction to this story, please click here Clara Löwenhardt, 1880-1964 The pictures of ‘Aunt’ Clara and myself have been preserved in a photo album made by my parents and documenting the first two…
The origins of Hannchen
For ten years longer than she lived my great-grandmother Hannchen has lain at the ‘youngest’ Jewish cemetery at De Knik in Denekamp. She died on 18 October 1930. For forty years she lived at the…
The way to the Löwenhardts
by guest author Sebastian Zimmer, Oranienburg, Germany In 2021, my wife and I began to take a closer look at our two family stories. The decisive factor was a death that moved us very much…
Walter’s forced wanderings
WALTER ROSENBAUM IN THE NETHERLANDS, 1938-1939 Joseph Rosenbaum and the author are both great-grandsons of Hannchen and Isaac ten Brink of Denekamp in The Netherlands. John’s grandmother Julia was murdered in Auschwitz, her sister Rosalie…
