To write… or not to be
Now on show in Delden in the East of The Netherlands, the exhibition To write… or not to be, presenting my very personal fusion of Jewish family history and ceramic tile making created in 2018-2019. Click here for 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: his son Arthur with his own family in Auschwitz, September 1942; his son Walter in Sobibor (April 1943) and his…
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 grandfather Adolf Löwenhardt, obviously much younger than the bald heads. No doubt about it. The meeting took place in spa…
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 died. Seventy five years after his death I have been able to give him a face.
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 ‘hinterland’ is no big deal. They grew up with grandpa’s and grandma’s, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces. Not us.…
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. After November 1942 no one was left to tell. The four pictures were waiting in a tinplated box, I need…
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, De Leeuw, Ten Brink and Weijl families have been preserved for posterity – with the help of archiving by the…
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. 1 was kosher butcher in the Holtjesstraat in my hometown Almelo.…
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, until the mid-1930s, they will have met more than once. I never heard my father talk about Freddie – but…
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 sheets. ‘General Police, Gelderland Province. Political Branch’ is printed in the left upper corner. (more…)
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 (?) Considering the large number of family members, in itself it is not terribly surprising. But remarkable it is.…
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. I am roaming the gravesite and suddenly I stumble upon a simple gravestone that gives me a shock. (more…)
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. 2 It is 19 November 1914 and Herman’s only…
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 kilometres north and settled in Oberhemer with Levi Löwenhardt. Between 1873 and 1892 they had twelve children, nine boys and…
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…)
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 been dominated by their nine brothers. Later, most of them perished in the Holocaust. What were they like, these three…
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 years of my life. (more…)
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 apart from my friends, as did the handmade clothes she lovingly sewed on her Singer sewing machine. (more…)
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 collection contains two short letters written in Dutch by Josef’s host, mrs. Betje Stork-Sanders. (more…)
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 had managed to escape from Europe in October 1939. She took her teenage son Walter Rosenbaum (1922-1997). Joe is Walter’s…
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 the twelve Löwenhardt children from Oberhemer, Germany and the second and last to arrive in the US. (more…)
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 almost forty years preceding the Holocaust he was one of the most visible representatives of the declining number of Jews…
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 was one of the most visible representatives of the declining number of Jews of the old city of Oldenzaal and…
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…)
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 Netherlands census was on 31 May 1947, less than three months before the author of these words was born. So…
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 spot now occupied by the Blokhuis butcher’s shop – bearing six children – with her husband Isaak ten Brink, cattle…
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. This allowed the author to trace little milestones in the development of Klara’s son Kurt during the first and only…
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? (more…)
Continue Reading The Jewish orphanage for Westfalia & Rhineland
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 ‘Kindertransports’ to London. In the intervening 72 years George (born as Hans-Georg) had not been in touch with any of…
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. A year later, his wife Hennie, his daughters Hannie and Lida, his father Isaäk, his brother Mauritz and his family…
