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 […]
Hermann Kleeblatt
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 […]
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 […]