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Grete de Levie * 1906

Eppendorfer Baum 3 (Eimsbüttel, Harvestehude)

HIER WOHNTE
GRETE DE LEVIE
JG. 1906
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ
ERMORDET

further stumbling stones in Eppendorfer Baum 3:
Ernst Lychenheim, Mathilda (Tilly) Lychenheim

Grete de Levie, born on 9 May 1906 in Leer/Eastern Friesland, deported on 25 Oct. 1941 to the Lodz Ghetto, murdered on 10 May 1942 in the Chelmno extermination camp.

Eppendorfer Baum 3

Grete de Levie was born on 9 May 1906 in Leer/Eastern Friesland. Her father, Jakob de Levie, born on 15 Dec. 1870 in the Dutch village of Nieuwe Pekela, ran a livestock trade. The mother, Sophie de Levie, née de Vries, born on 5 July 1884, came from Leer. She was the second wife of Jakob de Levie, whose first wife Berta, née Rosenboom, had died at the age of 28 on 3 May 1904. She left behind an almost five-year-old son, Benjamin, Grete’s half-brother.

Nothing is known about Grete’s schooling or vocational training. Presumably, she went to the Jewish school in Leer. This school had already existed since 1793 and it was operated as an elementary school. Shortly before Grete started school, in 1910, the Jewish Community opened a new school building with a teacher’s apartment on what was then Deichstrasse (today Ubbo-Emmius-Strasse). By this time, 25 students attended classes (The former school building, closed in 1938, is today a place of remembrance and commemoration). Grete, her half-brother Benjamin, and their parents lived in Leer at Wilhelmstrasse 106.

Benjamin left the parents’ home in 1927 after his marriage to Elly, née Rosenberg, born on 27 Dec. 1902 in Leer. Both then resided at Brunnenstrasse 38, where their son Jakob was born on 8 Mar. 1930. After the Nazis assumed power in 1933, the restrictions and hostilities against the Jewish population increased in Leer as well. Presumably because of this, the family moved to Frankfurt/Main in 1938.

At first, there are only indirect references to Grete’s professional activities. It is known that she left Leer at intervals, presumably to work as a maid. She was registered with the authorities in the Dutch towns of Groningen and Leeuwarden, in various towns in Eastern Friesland (Westerstede, Esens), and in Oldenburg.

Starting in Oct. 1936, she lived in Hamburg. Grete registered as a member of the German-Israelitic Community in Hamburg. She gave "Stütze” (household help) as her job designation. The Jewish Community’s Jewish religious tax (Kultussteuer) card file provides information about the registration addresses, which were presumably identical to her places of employment.

From Oct. 1936 onward, she worked in the household of the physician Salomon Goldschmitt and his family at Klosterallee 80, second floor, where the doctor’s practice was also located. She remained with the family when they relocated their apartment and practice to Eppendorfer Baum 3, second floor, in Nov. 1937. On 30 Sept. 1938, the licenses to practice medicine for Jewish doctors expired and Salomon Goldschmitt had to give up his doctor’s office after 30 years of practicing. He fled to Shanghai with his wife Hedwig in May 1939.

At this point, Grete de Levie moved to Wiesendamm 160 to live with Marie Eisenberg. The two women found new accommodation at Eimsbütteler Strasse 24 starting on 15 Nov. 1940. There, in July 1941, Grete had a last encounter with her parents, who were registered as residing at Grete’s address for nine days.

Grete de Levie and Marie Eisenberg received the deportation order to the Lodz Ghetto. The train left Hamburg on 25 Oct. 1941. Their address in the ghetto was Froschstrasse 14/3, where they were quartered in a room with five other people.

The "meticulous” bookkeeping in the ghetto subsequently confirmed that both women were "resettled” ("ausgesiedelt”) on 10 May 1942. This constitutes a euphemistic term for deportation to the Chelmno extermination camp 60 kilometers (some 37 miles) away, where Grete de Levie and Marie Eisenberg were murdered.

Grete’s parents Jakob and Sophie de Levie were deported from Berlin to the Theresienstadt Ghetto on 11 Sept. 1942 and from there to the Auschwitz extermination camp on 16 May 1944. They had left Leer for Berlin in Mar. 1940, presumably based on a directive from Gestapo headquarters in Wilhelmshaven. The region of Eastern Friesland was to be "free of Jews” by 1 Apr. 1940. The Jewish (forced organization) Reich Association of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland), into which all Jewish communities were incorporated, made efforts to resettle the Eastern Friesland Jews in order to prevent their impending deportation to the Lublin District.

Grete de Levie’s half-brother Benjamin, his wife Elly, and their joint son Jakob were deported from Frankfurt/Main to the Lodz Ghetto on 20 Oct. 1941, where they perished. Benjamin de Levie’s death in the ghetto was registered on 20 Aug. 1942; Elly and Jakob were deported to the Chelmno extermination camp on 10 Sept. 1942, like Grete five months earlier, and they were murdered there.

Translator: Erwin Fink
Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: August 2021
© Christina Igla

Quellen: 1, 4, 5, 9, Staatsarchiv Hamburg; 332-8_A51/1 Film K2428, K2441, 522-1_992e" Deportationslisten; Auszug aus den Haushaltskarten der Stadt Leer und Übersicht über die Familie de Levy- erhalten von Menna Hensmann, Stadtarchiv in Leer;
www.aerzteblatt.de" Dtsch Ärztebl 2008; 105 (39): A 2043-4; www.ancestry.de
Adressbuch Hamburg (online); USHMM (via ancestry) Meldeunterlagen Getto Lodz; wikipedia: Die jüdische Gemeinde in Leer (alles abgerufen 5.4.2021); Anna von Villiez: Entrechtung und Verfolgung "Nicht arischer" Ärzte in Hamburg von 1933-1945", Edzard Busemann-Disselhoff, Olaf Hennings: Auf den Spuren ehemaliger jüdischer Mitbürger in Leer, Seite 7; Archivpädagogische Anlaufstelle: Shoa–Eine Sammlung.
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