Lovenberg Max

24.06.1891 - [1941-1943, Minsk, Trostenets]

Lovenberg Margaret

30.10. 1896 - 1941, Minsk

Gerda Lovenberg

July 22, 1922 - September 13, 2013, Park Forest, Illinois (USA)

Lovenberg Karl-Otto

09.22.1925 - 1941, Minsk

Lovenberg Ruth

16.03.1927 - 1941, Minsk

I met Susan Rhyne (granddaughter of Max Lovenberg), at my daughter's wedding in Washington in 2012, where she was with her husband, the father of the bride's groom (of my daughter). The story of her family, which I first learned from my daughter, and then from personal correspondence with Susan, shocked me. I thought, how small is the world in which we live. And how suddenly the fate of people living now and long dead, and in this case, those who perished in Minsk ghetto, intersect at one point. And I wanted to share this story with people who are not indifferent to the fate of hundreds of thousands of victims who were killed by the Nazi in Minsk ghetto, as well as in the Belarusian concentration camp of Trostenets.

First a few lines about the family of Lovenberg, taken from the official list of Jews who were killed by the National Socialists, the information published on the Internet.

"Among the victims of National Socialism was a wealthy family of German Jews Lovenberg (Löwenberg), who lived in the German city of Waren (Muritz). The head of the family Max Lovenberg (born June 24, 1891) was a respected man in the city, he had his own business. He lived with his wife Margaret (Oct. 30, 1896) and three children: the eldest daughter Gerda (July 20, 1922), the son Karl-Otto (September 22, 1925) and the youngest daughter Ruth (March 16, 1927).” (Annotation: as in documents - K.K.)

The eldest daughter of the Lovenbergs family called Gerda, who managed to escape from Nazi Germany, spent almost all her long life in Park Forest, Illinois, USA. She died on September 22, 2013 at the age of 91. She has a daughter Susan, who for many years did not know about the terrible fate that had befallen the family of her mother. The mother answered all her daughter’s questions briefly: "They died during the war". And only in 2008, when her mother’s cousins ​​Maggie and Kate, who lived all their lives in the United States came to visit her, she learned the terrible truth from the conversation with her relatives. She was shocked and angry at the same time, why her parents had been silent for so many years. That's what Susan told me about what she had learned about the life of her mother's family.

"In 1990, Dr. Dorothea Rother, a teacher of the seminary from my mother’s home town of Waren (Muritz) found her, and they began to correspond. Dr. Dorothea Rother was studying and investigating the fate of Jews who had been killed by the Nazis, namely the ones from the city of Waren. She and her 17 students studying the Holocaust called their project "Life belongs to the living." During their studies, they learned about the tragedy of six Jewish families who had lived in their hometown of Waren before the war, and decided to focus their efforts on them. They took the tragedies of these families very personally. Among these six Jewish families, destroyed by the Hitler regime, there was the family of Lovenberg - my mother's family. Thanks to the correspondence with Dr. Dorothea Rother my mother found out the truth about the fate of her family, but she did not say anything about it to me for many years.

My mother's life (Gerda Lovenberg) in the United States was not easy. She didn’t get on well with her aunt, to whom she came, and being quite a young 16-year-old girl, without any language or special education, had to learn how to live in a foreign country herself.

Eventually, her life became better, she married my father, an American, I was born, but my parents agreed not to tell me anything about my Jewish roots. So great my mother's fear of the terrible massacres of Jews in Germany was that she had witnessed. She did not even teach me her native German language, because she was afraid that my German accent would be the reason for unnecessary questions from my counterparts.

After the death of my mother in 2013, I contacted Dr. Dorothea Rother and in September 2014, at her invitation, I visited the German city of Waren, where my mother had been born and had lived with her family until the age of 16.

 According to Mama's stories, the pre-war life in Waren was like in a fairy tale. Everything collapsed with the Nazis coming to power.

In Waren, I learned that the Lowenberg family had been very famous and respected in the city for the past hundred years. They had a store selling household goods, besides that they owned a syndicate for coal sale, as well as a number of other enterprises. Their three-storeyed beautiful house was (and still is) in the center of the "new square" (Neuer Markt). On the first floor there was a shop, on the second floor there lived the head of the family Max Lovenberg with his wife and three children, and on the third floor of the house Matilda lived, my mother's grandmother. She adhered to kosher food, unlike the rest of the family, so she ate separately. Margaret, the wife of Max Lovenberg, led the bookkeeping in a family store.

My grandfather, Max Lovenberg, was wounded during the First World War and was awarded the Iron Cross for bravery, as were his two brothers Karl and Otto. Max was entitled to an allowance for injury, but he refused it in favor of the state, as he was a patriot and considered himself a real German. After the death of his two brothers, Karl and Otto, his mother, Matilde, was also entitled to benefits, but she also refused to receive them for the same reason.

Unfortunately, no merits for the homeland could not save the family from the Nazis who came to power. During the well-known pogrom of 1938, the family business of Lovenberg was destroyed, and the head of the family was arrested and imprisoned. After the arrest of the father, Max Lovenberg, his eldest daughter Gerda (my mother) managed to escape via Hamburg to the United States. The official version of the departure was a visit to Aunt Greta living in New York, but the whole family at that time understood that she would not come back. The main thing at that time was the only one - that she was allowed to leave the country. Fortunately, the escape was a success!

In 1939, Max Lovenberg, my grandfather, was released from prison, and he with his wife and younger children decided to escape from Germany via Hamburg to the United States, but unfortunately, they failed to do this. In Hamburg they were detained and on November 8, 1941 they were sent by the first echelon to Minsk ghetto, where they arrived on November 11, 1941. Soon all the Jews, and there were more than a thousand of them in this echelon, were murdered: some of them were shot, the others died in the "gas vans". Unfortunately, it is unknown what exactly happened to the family of Lovenberg.

I was very worried when I first stepped onto the ground of my ancestors. Thanks to Dr. Dorothea Rother and her students, I was given a very warm welcome. Their project, which I mentioned above, found responses in the hearts of many people and organizations. In particular, the financing of this project comes from the organization "Christian Organization of Youth Villages", as well as from private entrepreneurs. I visited the house where my mother had been born, and which had been perfectly preserved to the present days. Now On the first floor of the house there is an Asian fast food restaurant, on the second floor there are residential apartments. I saw that rooms there were very bright and spacious.

There is no Jewish cemetery any longer there, they do not even have a synagogue. Together with Dr. Dorothea, I visited the place where the Jews had been buried. Now there is no tombstone, just an old oak tree and a star of David with an inscription in Hebrew.

The week I spent in Waren was unforgettable for me. The local video center made a film about my stay in Waren, in which I answered the questions of two students and showed the photos of my family which I had brought with me. Also in the city hall I met with the mayor of Waren, Norbert Moller (Norbert Moller) and the manager of the district administration of Mecklenburg, Mr. Heiko Karger (Heiko Karger).

During the time that I spent in Waren, I had the feeling of living all the life of my mum’s family. I saw their happy pre-war life and the terrible, tragic ending of the life story of their family, which they found in an unknown for them far-off Belarus.

I would very much like to visit Minsk, where my grandparents died (Max and Margaret Lovenberg), as well as my mother's brother and sister (Karl-Otto and little Ruth) "

Written from the words of Susan Rhyne. Tatyana Mustafina. Minsk, 2016