34 Postcards: Bernhard Lewitt
Episode IV
To: Frau Marg. Kuhnt Dresdenerstr. 11.Berlin S.O. 36 Deutschland
Zaandam, 22.3.38 Liebe Grete! Bin heute hier bei schönstem Wetter angekommen, habe mich schon 1 Stunde gesonnt. Brief folgt. Herzl. Gruß & Kuß Richard Auch von uns beiden herzliche Grüße. Wir freuen uns sehr. Viele Grüße B+F.**
Dear Grete! Arrived here today in the most beautiful weather, I already sunbathed for 1 hour. Letter follows. Greetings & kiss Richard Greetings from both of us. We are very pleased. Kind regards B+F.**
It’s March 1938 and Richard is once again visiting B. and F. in Zaandam. It’s almost exactly a year since his last visit, back in March of 1937. The card is a short note to Margarethe, letting her know that he arrived and that he is enjoying his visit. B. and F. send their regards as well and let Margarethe know that they are very happy about Richard’s visit.
The front of the postcard shows the Prins Hendrikkade, a waterfront street next to the Voorzaan, a branch of the Zaan river, which flows through Zaandam.
The Prins Hendrikkade is still around today, so I took a walk along it on Google maps, to see if I could find the houses on the postcard, and I did: The first house on the left is Prins Hendrikkade 56, followed by Prins Hendrikkade 57.
Let’s take a closer look.
Look at the gables and intricate roof tiling on both houses, and compare the windows, doors, and bay windows. Even though the angles of the images are slightly different, I see enough similarities to confirm that these are indeed the same houses. They have aged pretty well in the 86 years that lie between these 2 images.
But back to 1938. Richard sends a second postcard from the same visit, just 6 days later.
To: Frau Marg. Kuhnt Dresdener Str. 11. Berlin S.O. 36. Deutschland
Zaand. 28.3.38. Liebe Mutti! Teile Dir nur kurz mit, dass ich am Mittwoch Abend 10.17 ___* Bhf bin. Sonst alles gesund u. munter grüßt und küsst Dich Dein Richard Gruß an alle Dicker Gruß B.+F.**
Dear Mum! Just letting you know that I'll be at ___* train station on Wednesday evening at 10.17 pm. Otherwise all healthy and cheerful greets and kisses you your Richard Greetings to all Big greetings B.+F.**
It’s Monday, March 28th, and Richard lets Margarethe know that he will arrive back home on Wednesday evening. According to the postmark, the card is sent from Amsterdam, which is also featured on the front of the card, titled “Amsterdam. Singel b/d Munttoren”
The picture shows the Singel canal and the Munttoren/Mint Tower in Amsterdam. The tower was originally part of one of the main gates in Amsterdam’s medieval city wall, built in 1480. A fire heavily damaged the tower in 1618, and it was rebuilt in 1620. The name of the tower refers to the fact that the original guard house on the side of the tower–which was replaced in 1887 with the one you see on the card–was temporarily used to mint coins during the war with England and France in the 17th century. The canal and the Munttoren are still around today, and besides some additions, renovations, and modernizations, look pretty much the same as they do on the card.
The chronologically next postcard is sent only 2 months later, and finally confirms the name behind the initial F.
To: Familie Richard Kuhnt (Deutschland) Dresdener Str. 11 Berlin S.O. 36 ___*
Zaandam, 10.6. Meine Lieben, Bin gut und gesund angekommen. Das Wetter ist auch sehr schön**. Mir ist sauwohl zumute**. Brief folgt. Herzliche Grüße Eure Hanni** Meine Lieben, das arme Kind ist blass und hoffen wir, dass sie sich gut erholt. Viele Grüße B. Auch von mir recht herzliche Grüße und bin riesig froh, die Kleine hier zu haben. Kuss Friedel
Zaandam, 10.6. My dears, I arrived safe and sound. The weather is also very nice**. I feel really good**. Letter follows. Kind regards, your Hanni** My dears, the poor child is pale and let's hope she recovers well. Best regards B. Warm greetings from me too, and I'm really happy to have the little one here. Kiss Friedel
We met Hanni already last time at Unanswered through a postcard B. and Margarethe sent to her at Dresdenerstr. 11, from their visit to the Alkmaar cheese market. My assumption then was that Hanni is Margarethe’s daughter, as the card is sent to the Kuhnt’s address, and Margarethe signs it with “Gruß Mutti/Greetings mom”.
On her card to the Kuhnts, Hanni lets them know that she has arrived safe and sound in Zaandam and that she is feeling really well. Interestingly B. calls Hanni a “Kind/child” and comments on her health, hoping that the visit will help her to get better. Friedel, who for the first time signs with her name rather than her initial, also refers to Hanni as “die Kleine/the little one”, so I assume that Hanni is significantly younger than Friedel and B. Judging by Hanni’s handwriting and word usage, however, I think that she is at least in her late teens or even in her early 20s. It also sounds like she has been traveling alone from Berlin to Zaandam, which speaks against her being a child.
The image on the front of the postcard gave me a bit of a runaround.
As you can see, there’s no description of the image on the front or the back of the card. We know from the postmark, however, that the card was sent from Zaandam, so that’s where I assumed the shot was taken. I zoomed in on the card and found a few clues: There’s a sign that says “Amsterdam” to the left. There’s a hotel and cafe next to it (judging by the “Hotel” and “Cafe” signage on the building). Further in the distance, there’s a sign for Simon De Wit, a now-defunct Dutch supermarket chain, and to the right, there are two buildings with signage on them, which I can’t decipher. Last but not least, the building in the middle of the card looks like it might be somewhat significant. I spent a few hours researching these clues, focusing mainly on Zaandam and Amsterdam, but I was not able to locate this shot.
I’m sure you can tell by now that I love looking for clues and figuring things out myself, but after a few hours of trying to find out where this photo was taken, I had to escalate this to Google image search, and within a few seconds I was able to confirm that this is the “Gezicht op Dam met Havenmeesterskantoor/View of dam with harbor master’s office” in Zaandam. A bit more research uncovered that this is a view of the harbor master’s office at the Wilhelmina lock in Zaandam. The lock was built in the early nineteen hundreds and put into operation in October 1903.
Today, the area looks very different, but there are a few buildings that are still around. See if you can spot them.
If you guessed the building on the left or the one in the distance with the round-arched windows, you are absolutely right. And if you weren’t able to locate the beautiful harbor master’s office, then there's a reason for that: It’s gone. It was replaced in the 1960s by that Brutalist building next to the lock. However, according to this article, there’s quite some regret over the demolition of the monumental harbor master’s office, and there are efforts underway to rebuild it.
Okay, enough about architecture, let's get back to the Kuhnts.
In the last episode, we met B. and F. and I made a few assumptions about them. I assumed that the F. stands for Friedel, that Friedel is a woman, and that she is married to B. I further assumed that B. is a man, that he is married to Friedel, and that he is Margarethe’s and Richard’s son.
I made these assumptions based on several observations:
Richard refers to someone named Friedel on the postcard he sends to Margarethe in March of 1937.
On the last postcard sent in 1937, F. uses female pronouns.
B. and F. sign their cards with “F+B” or “B+F”.
B. uses male pronouns on the postcard Richard sends to Margarethe.
B. and F. send their postcards to Familie Richard Kuhnt/The Richard Kuhnt Family and address the readers with Papa/dad and Mutti/mum on several occasions.
B.’s writing to the Kuhnts feels very intimate to me, especially the message he wrote on top of the postcard Richard sent to Margarethe “Weh, dass wir schei-den müssen. Leider hat Papa nicht schönes Wetter. Herzl. Gruß Euer B./Woe that we have to part. Unfortunately, dad doesn't have nice weather. Greetings your B.”
I also assumed that B. and F., who based on their command of the German language seem to be native speakers, moved to the Netherlands together, maybe because one of them has family in the Netherlands, or they got a job offer there, or they are adventurous spirits who are looking for a different life in a different county.
I was wrong.
F. and B. are not married, and B. is not Richard and Margarethe’s son. They don’t move to the Netherlands to be closer to family, or to start a new job, or to build a better life together. Bernhard Lewitt and Frieda Kuhnt flee to the Netherlands in the 1930s to try to escape the terrors of the Nazi regime.
At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, the economic and political situation in Germany is dire. The country is still recovering from the devastation of World War One and has been hit hard by the great depression. Millions of people are out of work, many are angry over the loss of the war, and few believe that the current government is properly addressing the economic crisis and political instability the country is experiencing. Widespread misery, anger, and fear offer fertile ground for the ideas and ideology of a small political party on the radical right: the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or Nazi Party.
In just 4 years, the Nazi Party manages to rise from 2.6% of the vote in 1928, to 33.1% in 1932 and becomes the largest political party in Germany. In January 1933 Adolf Hitler is sworn in as chancellor of Germany, and the dismantling of democracy, the revocation of basic civil rights, and the discrimination against Jews, Romani people, and others who are considered “subhuman” by the regime intensify immediately. Within days of seizing power, members of the Sturmabteilung–a paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party–start attacking Jewish businesses and synagogues. Within weeks, the regime calls for a boycott of Jewish businesses and passes a law that bans Jews from government jobs, legal professions, civil service, and teaching in secondary schools and at universities. Antisemitic propaganda is spread via the Nazi-controlled media and appears in shops and restaurants across the country. In May 1935, Jews are forbidden from joining the armed forces, and in September 1935 the Nuremberg laws are passed, prohibiting sexual relations and marriage between Germans and Jews, stripping German Jews of their citizenship, and prohibiting them from holding public office or voting in any elections. The Nuremberg laws further alienate and exclude Jews from German social, professional, and political life and contribute to an increasingly hostile environment in Nazi Germany.
Bernhard Lewitt is born in apartment II, at Wörtherstraße 44 in Berlin, on August 18th, 1899. His mother Regina and his father Raphael (who is also known as Rudolf) are part of a large Jewish family in Berlin, and Bernhard is their first child.
Raphael works at a gold plating and embossing store, about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from the family’s home. Regina is a bookkeeper and a dedicated and caring mother. 5 years after Bernhard is born, Regina and Raphael welcome their second child, Johanna, who is born at Kaiser Friedrichstraße 8. When Regina’s mother Clementine dies in 1910, the Lewitts move in with Regina’s father, Itzig Isidor Friedländer, at Luckauer Straße 6 in Berlin.
Regina, Raphael, Bernhard, and Johanna, continue to live with Isidor until at least 1917 when Raphael dies at the age of 50.
According to address book records, Regina, now a widow, moves to Menckenstraße 8 in Berlin, in 1920. Johanna is 16 at the time, so I assume that she is moving with her mother, but Bernhard, who is 21, might already have his own place. Unfortunately, I’m not able to find confirmation either way.
In 1926, Bernhard marries Margarete Anna Elise Szczurek, and while I’m not able to find address book records for either of them, their marriage certificate states that Bernhard works as a merchant and lives at Müllenhoffstraße 11 and that Margarete works as a housekeeper and lives at Ackerstraße 58. Bernhard’s sister Johanna gets married the same year, just a month after Bernhard and Margarete, to Werner Holz, a merchant from Berlin.
Regina moves to Holsteinische Straße 34, apartment II in Berlin the same year her children get married, and Johanna and Werner move in with her. 3 years later, in January 1929, Johanna and Werner welcome their son, Jürgen Rudolf Holz.
It’s the late 1920s, and the Lewitts are part of a community of more than 500,000 Jews in Germany. They are German citizens, serve in the German military, and contribute to every field of German business, science, and culture: Bernhard served in WWI. His father Raphael was a merchant; his mother Regina is a bookkeeper. His uncle Moritz is a medical doctor and lecturer at the Humboldt University in Berlin. His uncle Albert is a merchant, his aunt Emma owns a store, and his aunts Jenny, Emma, and Sidonie are bookkeepers, just like his mother. They all live, work, and raise their families in a Germany that they consider their home. But it’s also a Germany that will soon be ruled by the Nazi regime. A regime that won’t waste any time spreading and implementing its antisemitic ideology and policies. By the end of its terrorizing reign in 1945, the Nazis and their collaborators will have murdered more than 6 million Jews–almost two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population–in the Holocaust.
Most Lewitts stay in Berlin and try to withstand and live their lives through the increasing pressure, discrimination, and persecution that they face from the dictatorship. Only some decide to leave. Bernhard Lewitt is one of them. In 1935 he and Margarethe divorce, and sometime between 1935 and 1937, he emigrates to the Netherlands.
The first record that I have of Bernhard in the Netherlands, is this deed that the Municipal Archive of Zaanstad kindly shared with me.
On it you can see that Bernhard Lewitt (fields 3 and 2), male (4), head of the household (5) born on August 18th, 1899 (6), in Berlin (7), not married at the time of registration (8), but divorced (9), of German nationality (11), working as a merchant (12), got registered in Zaandam on April 13th, 1937 (15), coming from Berlin (16). Bernhard’s residence at the time of registration is recorded as Bootenmakerstraat 62 (14). His address as of July 6th, 1937, will be Hoveniersstraat 26.
Last time at Unanswered, we looked at the first postcard Richard and Margarethe received from the Netherlands. As you may remember, the card was sent by F.+B. on January 18, 1937, and the front of the card showed the Blauwepad in Zaandam with a little hand-drawn “x” and a handwritten note indicating the approximate location of their “villa”. I put all three locations, the Jan van Scorelstraat (which is where the Blauwepad was), the Bootenmakerstraat 62, and the Hoveniersstraat 26 on a map, and while they are all within under 2 miles of each other, their orientation doesn’t align with the “x” on the postcard. Now keep in mind that the postcard is sent in January 1937, 4 months before Bernhard registers in Zaandam, and that considering the circumstances of their move, B.+F. may have been somewhat protective of their location.
Now, at this point you might be thinking, this is all great Melanie, but how do you even know that B. is indeed Bernhard Lewitt, and where is Friedel in all of this? Fair enough, but get ready, we’ll have to take a step back and learn about some devastating details to answer some of these questions.
Remember my assumptions about B. and F. and their relation to each other and to Richard and Margarethe? They were all challenged by one seemingly inconsequential line on the last postcard we looked at last time at Unanswered:
At first, I didn’t pay much attention to Frau Lewitt, assuming that she might be a neighbor or an acquaintance. I didn’t think that someone who signed a postcard with their last name would have played a significant role in the Kuhnt’s life, but my husband kept asking me: Who is Frau Lewitt? Have you looked into Frau Lewitt? A reader of Unanswered asked if I had considered that Friedel might be Richard and Margarethe’s daughter, and while I had, I hadn’t explored that possibility in detail. My gut told me that Bernhard was their son. But my gut wasn’t good enough, so I went back to this last postcard and asked myself: So who is Frau Lewitt? From the message on the postcard, I inferred that she and Friedel went on a day trip to Castricum, so I assumed that they were somewhat close. The fact that she signs with “Frau Lewitt”, rather than her first name, indicates to me that she is not close to the recipients of the card–Richard and Margarethe–but that they do know her. Now, if Frau Lewitt was a friend of Friedel, I assume that she would sign with her first name rather than her last. The fact that she signs with her last name, indicates to me that she is either significantly older than Friedel or that she is not that close to her either. Who could be described as potentially older than you, known by you and your family, close enough to go on a day trip with, but not close enough to sign with her first name on a postcard that you send to your parents in 1937? What if Frau Lewitt was Friedel’s mother-in-law, and Friedel was actually Richard and Margarethe’s daughter? And B.? Could he be their son-in-law and Frau Lewitt’s son? I was driving when I shared this theory with my husband. He grabbed his phone, typed a few words, and said: “I got him. Bernhard Lewitt, born in Berlin in 1899, registered in Zaandam.” Hold up, attentive readers might want to object: How did your husband know to look for a Bernhard Lewitt? Good catch. So far only Friedel signed with her first name, Bernhard has only used his first name initial.
Well, in 1951, 5 postcards from now—and we’ll get to that one next time–Bernhard will for the first time sign with his full name rather than his first name initial.
As soon as I got back to my office, I started looking into Bernhard Lewitt. I was able to find his birth certificate and marriage license to Margarete Anna Elise Szczurek. I found records of many of his relatives, and I also came across an entry for a Bernhard Lewitt, born in Berlin in 1899, and registered in Zaandam at the Zaanstad Municipal Archives.
At this point, I had no real connection between Bernhard Lewitt and our Kuhnts, so I started looking for Friedel Kuhnt-Lewitt, which proved a lot more difficult. I wasn’t sure if “Friedel” was her legal first name, and the Landesarchiv Berlin only provides birth records until 1910 for privacy protection reasons. Considering that Richard and Margarethe only got married in 1910, Friedel was probably born after that. I wasn’t able to make any progress on Friedel, so I focussed on building out Bernhard’s family tree to see if I could make any connections from there.
As the branches of Bernhard’s family tree filled with names–Werner, Johanna, Jürgen, Regina, Rosalie, Doris, Jenny, Sidonie, Lisbeth–a sickening similarity turned my excitement into dread: they all died in the early 1940s.
During the first few years of the Nazi regime, the dictatorship focuses on pressurizing Jews–through discrimination, exclusion, and persecution–to emigrate from Germany. An especially violent and disgusting example of that approach is the Kristallnacht in November 1938, during which state police and Nazi paramilitary forces vandalize, plunder, and smash the storefronts and windows of hundreds of Jewish shops, homes, and offices, and set synagogues on fire. After the Kristallnacht, more than 26,000 Jewish men are deported to concentration camps and subjected to unprecedented abuse, leading to hundreds of deaths. Most Jewish prisoners, however, are released over the next three months on the condition that they begin the process of emigration from Germany. By the end of 1939 more than 60% of Jews have emigrated. Over the next two years the regime’s policy changes from expulsion to total extermination, and the remaining Jewish community in German-occupied Europe is subjected to systematic deportations to ghettos and death camps.
Address book records list Regina, Johanna, Werner, and Jürgen at Holsteinische Straße 34 until 1940, when their entry disappears. From there, reports differ, but according to their deportation index cards, Bernhard’s sister Johanna, her husband Werner, and their 12-year-old son Jürgen live at Kalkreuthstr. 1, on November 27, 1941, the day they are deported to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia.
The Riga Ghetto, a small area in a neighborhood of Riga, is established by the Nazi occupation command in July of 1941, shortly after Riga has fallen to German forces. They order all Jews in and around Riga to relocate to the ghetto by October 25, 1941, crowding about 30,000 Jews into a small 16-block area. The Nazis fence them in with barbed wire and shoot anyone who comes too close to the ghetto perimeter.
Transport VII/4171, the first transport of German Jews to Riga, departs Berlin on Thursday, November 27th, 1941. Johanna, Werner, and Jürgen are on transport VII. When the train arrives in Riga, on Saturday, November 29th, there is no housing available for the deported Jews, so the Nazis keep them on the train. The next morning, they send the train to Rumbula station, order all people off the train, march them into the forest, and shoot them. Johanna, Werner, and Jürgen are among 1053 deported German Jews, shot in the Rumbula forest on the morning of Sunday, November 30th, 1941.
The German Jews are the first group to be murdered that day but they are not the last. November 30th, 1941, is the first day of the Rumbula massacre in which more than 25,000 Jews are murdered.
Shortly after the German Jews are killed, people from the ghetto arrive on foot after a grueling 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) march in snow and freezing temperatures. They are ordered to undress and put their clothes and valuables in designated piles. They are then marched to specifically designed murder pits, dug out by Russian prisoners of war, days ahead of the massacre. The six pits, sufficient to bury 25,000 people, have several levels and a ramp to march the victims directly into their graves. People are marched down the ramps over previously shot victims, are then ordered to lie down on top of them, and are shot in the neck. By the end of the first day, about 13,000 people have been murdered. The killing resumes on Monday, December 8th, when another 12,000 Jews are marched from the ghetto to the forest and killed.
Regina, who was forced to leave her apartment at Holsteinische Straße and was moved to a so-called Judenwohnung/Jewish flat at Prager Straße 26, is deported to the ghetto in Riga just a few weeks after Johanna, Werner and Jürgen have been killed. Transport VIII/5118 leaves Berlin on January 13th, 1942, with 1034 German Jews on board. Regina is one of them.
At the time of her deportation, Regina is 70 years old and deemed “unfit for work” by her captors. It’s unclear what happens to Regina after she arrives at the ghetto on January 16th, 1941, but according to several records, she is murdered in Riga at an unknown time.
Johanna, Werner, Jürgen, and Regina aren’t the only family members of Bernhard who are deported and killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, but they are his closest. I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors they went through, or what it must have been like for Bernhard and Friedel to have fled to the Netherlands–a country that was invaded and taken over by the Nazis in May of 1940–and to learn that Bernhard’s mother, sister, brother-in-law, and nephew, who stayed behind–have been deported and murdered. The pain, anger, and fear are unfathomable to me.
I know this episode has taken us in a different direction, one that I didn’t expect when I started this investigation into 34 postcards. I didn’t even expect it a few weeks ago when I started working on this episode. But I want to tell the story of Bernhard and his family, a story that is filled with courage, love, and tremendous suffering, and which is inextricably tied to Richard and Margarethe Kuhnt, because they are one family.
You probably have questions. I know I do. What proof do we have that Bernhard and Friedel are together and that Friedel is indeed Friedel Kuhnt, the daughter of Richard and Margarethe? What happens to Bernhard and Friedel, and what happens to their families? And then there are of course still Hanni and Käthe, who are they? And what about the remaining postcards? There are 24 left, and there is still so much that remains Unanswered.
We’ll get to these questions and more in the new year, but for 2022, I want to leave you with one more answer, to an important question: Who is Frau Lewitt?
Frau Lewitt is Regina Lewitt, born on the 11th of March, 1872, as Regina Friedländer. Regina is the daughter of Itzig Isidor and Clementine Friedländer, born Arnheim. Regina is the sister of Rosalie, Lisbeth, and Emma Friedländer, and the wife of Raphael Lewitt. Regina is the mother of Bernhard and Johanna Lewitt, the mother-in-law of Friedel Kuhnt and Werner Holz, and the grandmother of Jürgen Lewitt. Regina is one of more than 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust. She was deported from Berlin on January 13th, 1942 and killed in Riga. Continue here to part 5.
*I’m marking words and letters that I can’t decipher with “_” to call them out. If you can read them, please let me know at unansweredcommunity@gmail.com. I appreciate your help!
**Deciphered and transcribed with the help of johannadambergk from the Genealogy subreddit. Thank you so much for sharing your time and skills with me <3.
Background music in voiceover: Subtle Break by Ghostrifter Official | https://soundcloud.com/ghostrifter-official Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Heartbreaking by Kevin MacLeod | https://incompetech.com/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/ Creative Commons Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/
Oh, Regina! And the rest of the family… these postcards are an important part of history.