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 suddenly popped up. I was sixty-two years of age. It has since come to dominate my life, it has turned […]
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 and made us realize how little we actually knew. We set ourselves the goal of learning from the living everything […]
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 by their first name. Date and place are known as well: 1956, McHenry Illinois, USA. The handwriting is Käthe’s. 1 I […]
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.