• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Löwenhardt Foundation

Stories and pictures on the histories of four families

  • Home
  • About us
  • Arts
  • Printed
  • Exhibitions
  • Family album
  • Contact
  • Home

All English articles

Sternlager

6 June 2020

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Sternlager

Bald heads

23 April 2020

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Bald heads

House arrest

9 April 2020

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.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading House arrest

Meet Kurt Ikenberg

11 December 2019

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.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Meet Kurt Ikenberg

Moving pictures

27 January 2019

‘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.…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Moving pictures

All that remains…

19 December 2018

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading All that remains…

Five years in the Internet

27 January 2018

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Five years in the Internet

Isaac de Leeuw, for kosher meat

12 January 2017

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.…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Isaac de Leeuw, for kosher meat

An ordinary boy

29 September 2016

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading An ordinary boy

The fatal exchange

15 August 2016

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The fatal exchange

Of four Juliuses

25 February 2016

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.…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Of four Juliuses

The Empire of the Chicken Jew

19 January 2016

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The Empire of the Chicken Jew

Bridegroom Money

2 December 2015

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Bridegroom Money

Blessing hands in Plettenberg

28 October 2015

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Blessing hands in Plettenberg

Purveyor to the King

28 March 2015

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Purveyor to the King

The Löwenhardt Sisters, I

31 October 2014

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The Löwenhardt Sisters, I

The Löwenhardt Sisters, II

31 October 2014

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The Löwenhardt Sisters, II

Mama’s Peach Jam

29 October 2014

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Mama’s Peach Jam

The Josef Rosenbaum Letters

25 March 2014

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The Josef Rosenbaum Letters

Walter’s forced wanderings

5 December 2013

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Walter’s forced wanderings

Ach Du Lieber…

12 September 2013

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Ach Du Lieber…

The last shoykhet of Oldenzaal – II

3 June 2013

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The last shoykhet of Oldenzaal – II

The last shoykhet of Oldenzaal – I

24 May 2013

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The last shoykhet of Oldenzaal – I

Of hope and despair – and reassurance

21 February 2013

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Of hope and despair – and reassurance

Ö or œ, d or dt?

11 January 2013

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Ö or œ, d or dt?

The origins of Hannchen

31 December 2012

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The origins of Hannchen

Growing up in Westerbork

30 December 2012

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Growing up in Westerbork

The Jewish orphanage for Westfalia & Rhineland

24 December 2012

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…)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The Jewish orphanage for Westfalia & Rhineland

Letter to George

23 December 2012

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading Letter to George

The death of Julius

20 December 2012

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…

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Continue Reading The death of Julius

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Noten / Footnotes
  1. Az., Abrahamszoon, son of Abraham; on his matseewa the abbreviation is Azn.[↩]
  2. Oldenzaal is a town in the Twente region of The Netherlands, near the German border[↩]

English

© 2021 | Löwenhardt Foundation