To: Fam. R. Kuhnt Dresdenerstr. 11 Berlin S.O. 36
7.6.50 Meine Lieben, von einem Ausflug nach Z. herzliche Grüße. Diesmal war es richtig heiß u. haben wir in der See gebadet. Schade nur, dass Du Mutti nicht mehr hier warst. Herzlichst Eure Friedel. Viele Grüße von Hilde u. Yvonne**
My dears, from a trip to Z. warm greetings. This time it was really hot, and we swam in the sea. It's just a pity that you mom weren't here anymore. Sincerely, your Friedel. Kind regards from Hilde a. Yvonne**
It’s the summer of 1950, and Friedel sends our first postcard since 1941 from a day trip to Zandvoort, a coastal town, about 40 minutes west of Amsterdam. It’s been 5 years since the end of the Second World War, and even though large parts of the world, including countries devastated by the war, find themselves at the beginning of a post-war economic boom, the scars of the war run deep in politics, cityscapes, and in the lives of those who survived.
The front of the card is titled “Groeten uit Zandvoort. Strandgezicht/Greetings from Zandvoort. Beachview” and shows just that, a beach in Zandvoort.
The back of the card introduces us to two new names: Hilde and Yvonne. Who are they? Family? Friends? Acquaintances?
To answer that question, we need to go back in time to 1937, when we last left Bernhard in Zaandam. It’s April and Bernhard lives at Bootenmakersstraat 62, a small, 5-unit apartment building that is still around today.
Until now, we weren’t able to prove that Friedel is with Bernhard in the Netherlands, but after more research, I was able to find Friedel’s registration card from Zaandam.
On it you can see that Frieda Margarete Kuhnt (fields 3 and 2), female (4), born on September 23, 1913 (6), in Berlin (7), not married at the time of registration (8), of protestant religion (10) and foreign nationality (11), without a profession (12), got registered in Zaandam on June 27, 1938 (15), coming from Berlin (16). Frieda’s residence at the time of registration is recorded as Hoveniersstraat 26, the home of B. Lewitt (14).*
Even though several sources (a newspaper article, Regina’s Stolperstein record, Bernhard and Friedel’s first postcard from Zaandam) indicate that Bernhard fled to the Netherlands already in 1935 and that Friedel joined him there in 1936, I have not been able to find any official records that confirm that timeline. The earliest time that I can confidently place them together in the Netherlands is June 1938 in Zaandam.
At that time Bernhard and Friedel live at Hoveniersstraat 26–a small house built in 1926, which is still around today.
3 years later, in October of 1940, just a few months after the Nazis occupy the Netherlands, Bernhard and Friedel leave Zaandam and move to Eerste Jan Steenstraat 49, apartment II, in Amsterdam. The building they live in back then does not exist anymore today.
I was able to find Bernhard’s record at the Amsterdam City Archives, and it gives us a lot of information about Bernhard and Friedel’s whereabouts during their time in the Netherlands.
As you can see on the record, Bernhard and Friedel stay at Eerste Jan Steenstraat until 1942 when they move to Nieuwe Kerkstraat 1, apartment I, in Amsterdam, a 4-unit apartment building that was built in 1905. Here is what it looks like today.
Three years later, in 1945, Bernhard and Friedel move to Albert Cuypstraat 201, apartment I, a 1-bedroom unit, in Amsterdam. The small, 3-unit apartment building with retail space on the ground floor was built in 1892 and is still standing strong.
As I was researching the building, I found recent pictures of apartment I. Yes, the furniture is different, the hardwood floors are probably new, and several coats of paint cover the walls that Bernhard and Friedel touched almost 80 years ago, but this is the apartment where Bernhard and Friedel will learn that the war is over. It’s also where they live when they finally get married on Thursday, August 9th, 1945. I imagine them right here in this room, looking out the window, Bernhard and Frieda Lewitt-Kuhnt.
At the end of 1948, Bernhard and Friedel move to Borssenburgplein 19, in Amsterdam, a mid-sized apartment building that was built in 1921. Here’s what it looks like today.
It’s here that Bernhard and Friedel meet another Jewish family: Siegfried, Hilde, and Yvonne Schwarz. They live in apartment III at Borssenburgplein 19 and share a painful past with the Lewitt-Kuhnts.
Siegfried Schwarz is born to Albert and Jetta (née Plocki) Schwarz in 1904 in Lissa, Germany. He marries Hildegard Philipsborn in 1929, and together they move to Amsterdam, a year after the Nazis have come to power in Germany. Siegfried and Hildegard have a daughter named Ellen. In 1941, Siegfried moves out of the family's apartment, and he and Hildegard divorce in July of 1945.
Hilde Schwarz (née Lewin) is born to Leo and Hedwig (née Hirschberg) Lewin in 1907 in Berlin. She is the second of three children of Leo and Hedwig. Hilde flees to the Netherlands at the end of 1934, while her parents and her siblings and their spouses stay in Berlin.
Hilde’s father Leo and her mother Hedwig are deported from Berlin to the ghetto in Theresienstadt on March 17, 1943, on the 4. und letzter großer Alterstransport/and last large Transport for the Elderly. They are forced to leave Berlin, together with 1340 other Jews. One of them is Albert Lewitt, Bernhard’s uncle, who we met in episode 5.
There’s a note in the “Bemerkungen/Remarks” column of Albert’s, Leo’s, and Hedwig’s entry on the transport list that I missed before:
“Verw. Abz.” or “Ehemann Verw. Abz/Husband Verw. Abz.”
This note stands for Vewundetenabzeichen/wound badge, a German military decoration that was awarded to soldiers of the German army who were wounded during World War I. So, Albert and Leo are not only German citizens, they have also risked their lives and were wounded fighting for Germany in the First World War. They are war heroes, decorated by the same country that is now deporting them to ghettos, concentration, and extermination camps. And Albert and Leo are not alone, the transport they are on includes a large number of decorated former soldiers and their spouses.
Leo dies in the ghetto in Theresienstadt in February of 1944, and Hedwig is transported to the concentration and extermination camp in Auschwitz on May 16th, 1944.
Hilde’s brother Erwin and his wife Martha Lewin (née Wilzig) are deported from Berlin to Auschwitz on March 4th, 1943, together with 1140 other German Jews. Erwin is killed in Auschwitz just three months later, on the 23rd of June, 1943. Martha dies in Auschwitz at an unknown time.
Hilde’s brother Alfred, his first wife Elsbeth (née Cohn), and their 3-year-old daughter Tana are deported from Berlin to Auschwitz on the 36. Osttransport/East Transport on March 12th, 1943, together with 944 other German Jews.
Hilde, who fled to the Netherlands in 1934, is the only family member who escapes deportation. She marries Siegfried Schwarz in August 1945. Together they move to Borssenburgplein 19 and welcome their daughter Yvonne the same year.
Bernhard and Friedel and Siegfried, Hilde, and Yvonne become neighbors three years later, in 1948. I wonder if and how quickly they learn how much they have in common. Both families fled their home country and had to give up their lives and livelihoods in Germany. They lost a large part of their family in the Holocaust, and they are trying to build a new life as a Jewish family in a post-war Europe that has lost two-thirds of its Jewish population to the terrors of the Nazi regime. I wonder if their shared pain, but also their shared experience and community turned them into fast and close friends.
But back to 1950 and our unanswered question: Who are Hilde and Yvonne? Hilde is Hilde Schwarz, born Lewin, a 43-year-old Jewish woman who lost her mother, father, brother, and sister-in-law in the Holocaust. She fled Nazi Germany to the Netherlands where she married Siegfried. Hilde Schwarz is Bernhard and Friedel’s neighbor and friend, and Yvonne is her 5-year-old daughter.
To: Fam. R. Kuhnt Dresdenerstr. 11 Berlin S.O. U.S.A. Sektor
Meine Lieben, von einem Ausflug zu zweien recht herzl. Grüße. Ihr seht hier das Palais unserer Königin. Ausführlicher Brief folgt. Sonst alles in Ordnung. Eure Friedel Viele herzliche Grüße B. 20/7**
My dears, warm greetings from our day trip. You see here the palace of our queen. Detailed letter follows. Otherwise, everything is fine. Your Friedel Warm regards B.**
It's the end of July 1950, just over a month since our last postcard, and Bernhard and Friedel send a card to Richard and Margarete from a day trip to the Paleis Soestdijk/Soestdijk Palace in Baarn, about 3o minutes southeast of Amsterdam.
The front of the card shows the palace, which was built in 1650 as a private hunting lodge and country residence for the mayor of Amsterdam.
Governor William III, an avid hunter, bought the residence in 1674 and continued to use it as a hunting lodge and summer home. The palace was seized in 1795, during the French invasion, and turned into an inn for French troops. In 1815, then crown prince and later King Willem II received the hunting lodge as a gift for his battle efforts against the French. Over the next 125 years, the royal family updated and expanded the palace significantly and used it mainly as a summer residence. After the invasion by the Nazis in 1940, the palace once again housed foreign soldiers. The royal family returned after the war and continued to own the palace until 1971 when it became state property.
Today, the palace is owned by the MeyerBergman Group, which purchased it in 2017 and is planning to turn it into a hotel and event center.
I want to call your attention to one more detail on this postcard: The added “U.S.A. Sektor/US Zone” to Richard and Margarete’s address in Berlin. This is the first but not the last time that we will see this add-on on a postcard to the Kuhnts, so let’s take a look at what’s behind this.
After the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945, the four countries representing the Allies– the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union–stripped Germany of its territorial gains and annexed more than a quarter of its pre-war territory to Poland and the Soviet Union. They then divided Germany into four occupation zones: the American Zone in the South, the British Zone in the Northwest, the French Zone in the Southwest, and the Soviet Zone in the East.
Germany’s former capital Berlin, which was wholly located within the Soviet zone, was occupied jointly and divided into four zones as well.
The goal of the occupation was to demilitarize, denazify, and democratize Germany. However, the initial plan to govern Germany as a single unit broke down three years later, in 1948, due to ideological differences and growing tensions between the three western zones (US, UK, France) and the eastern Zone (Soviet Union).
In 1949, the three western zones were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland/BRD), commonly known as West Germany. Just a few months later, the Soviet Union established the German Democratic Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik/DDR), known as East Germany, in the Soviet Zone. While West Germany was a parliamentary democracy with an ordoliberal economic system, East Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship that was not recognized by West Germany or other non-communist countries.
After the establishment of these two German states, Berlin was divided into West and East Berlin, with West Berlin being surrounded by East German territory. Though the German inhabitants of West Berlin were citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany, West Berlin was not legally incorporated into West Germany and remained under the formal occupation of the western Allies until the reunification in 1990. In 1961, the Soviets began the construction of the Berlin Wall, a guarded concrete and barbed-wire barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 until the fall of the Wall in 1989.
When Richard and Margarete receive Bernhard and Friedel’s postcard from the Soestdijk Palace, they live in Berlin Kreuzberg, which is part of the US zone in West Germany. Their apartment building at Dresdenerstraße 11 is located about 500 meters from East Germany, and later on the Berlin Wall. On the map below you can see the Berlin Wall, separating East and West Germany in red. I marked the location of Richard and Margarete’s apartment with a pink dot in the lower right section of the map.
Here’s a picture that shows the Berlin Wall at the intersection of Waldemarstraße, Luckauerstraße, and Dresdenerstraße–marked with an orange circle on the map above–in 1962. As you can see, the Wall runs right across Dresdenerstraße and separates it into East and West Berlin.
Here’s a close-up of the border and street signs in the image.
And here is what the same intersection looks like today. Most, if not all of the buildings from back then have been torn down or replaced.
Richard and Margarete moved to Dresdenerstraße 11 in the 1930s, and they stay there during and after the Second World War. We don’t have any postcards from during the war, so it’s hard to tell what their life was like then, but in the summer of 1951 Richard visits Bernhard and Friedel in Amsterdam, and he sends two postcards to Margarete back in Berlin.
To: Frau Marg. Kuhnt Berlin S.O. 36 Dresdenerstr. 11 U.S.A. Sekt. Deutschland
30.5.51 Liebes Gretel! Von unserem heutigen Ausflug nach hier, herzl. Grüße und Küsse Dein Richard Auch von mir herzl. Gruß u. Kuss Friedel Yvonne**
Dear Gretel! From our trip here today, many greetings and kisses, your Richard Also from me many greetings a. kiss Friedel Yvonne**
Richard, Friedel, and Yvonne are on a day trip to Laren, a city about 30 minutes southeast of Amsterdam. The picture on the front of the postcard shows the Theehuis/tea house Sterkenburg, which doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
Richard sends another card from the same trip just 3 days later.
To: Frau Marg. Kuhnt Berlin S.O. 36 Dresdenerstr. 11 Deutschland
2.6.51 Liebe Grete! Vom Nachmittags-Ausflug nach hier herzl. Gruß u. Kuss Dein Richard Auch von mir viele Grüße Bernhard
Dear Grete! From an afternoon trip to here warm greetings and kiss, Your Richard Many greetings from me too, Bernhard
Bernhard and Richard are on a day trip to Zandvoort, the same coastal town that Friedel and Hilde visited about a year earlier. The front of the card, titled “Zandvoort - Strand vanaf Boulevard/Beach from Boulevard” shows another people-filled beach in Zandvoort.
The next postcard is sent about a year later, in the summer of 1952.
To: Fam. R. Kuhnt Dresdenerstr. 11 Berlin Amer. Sektor
24.6.52. Meine Lieben, wir sitzen hier in einer herrlichen Gegend und genießen. Herzl. Grüße Euch allen, Bernhard Auch von mir Grüße u. Küsse, ausführlicher Brief folgt. Friedel
My dears, we are sitting here in a beautiful area and are enjoying ourselves. Many greetings to you all, Bernhard Also from me greetings and kisses, detailed letter follows. Friedel
Bernhard and Friedel are in 's-Heerenberg, a Dutch city, close to the German border, 1.5 hours southeast of Amsterdam.
The front of the card shows several sights in 's-Heerenberg like the town hall and other historical buildings.
The last card from 1952 is sent in September to Richard and Margarete from Familie Schwarz.
To: Deutschland Frau Grete Kuhnt Berlin S.O. Dresdenerstr. 11
Liebe Oma und Opa, fein, dass Sie wieder aus dem Krankenhaus zu Ihrer Familie zurück sind. Heute gratulieren wir Ihnen alle allerherzlichst zu Ihrem Geburtstag, und hoffen, dass wir Sie bald wieder mit Ihrem Gatten bei uns in Amsterdam begrüßen können. Wie immer, bleiben wir mit den allerherzlichsten Grüßen, Ihre Familie Schwarz
Dear grandma and grandpa, it's great that you are back from the hospital and with your family. Today we congratulate you all on your birthday, and hope that we will soon be able to welcome you again with your husband in Amsterdam. As always, we remain with the warmest regards, Your family Schwarz
The front of the card is titled “Oud- Amsterdam, ‘t Kolkje/Old Amsterdam, ‘t Kolkje” and shows the Kolk, an old narrow canal/lock in Amsterdam that was built at the beginning of the 15th century. The Kolk runs under the Prins Hendrikkade, a waterfront street we met in episode 4.
This card is sent by Siegfried and Hilde Schwarz, Bernhard and Friedel’s neighbors and friends in Amsterdam. Hilde and Siegfried refer to Richard and Margarete as “Oma/grandma” and “Opa/grandpa”, and they wish Margarete, whose birthday is on the 5th of September, a happy birthday. It sounds like Margarete was in the hospital but is now back with her family. Hilde and Siegfried say that they look forward to welcoming Richard and Margarete back to Amsterdam soon. Their last sentence “Wie immer,/As always,” indicates that this is not the first card that they have sent to Richard and Margarete.
What strikes me about this card is that it is warm and personal and formal and distant at the same time. The four of them clearly know each other. The words on the card evoke a feeling of kindness and admiration, but the card is written in the German Sie form, which is considered formal and polite and indicates to me that they don’t know each other that well.
Hilde and Siegfried may not know Richard and Margarete well, but there may be a reason for their warmth and kindness that has less to do with them and more with Hilde’s brother Alfred, who was deported together with his wife and daughter in 1943.
Is Alfred alive? Where are his wife and daughter? How are they related to the Kuhnts? And let’s not forget about Friedel’s sister Hanni. Where is she? And we still don’t know a lot about Käthe, who we met in episodes 2 and 3.
17 postcards down, 17 more to go.
More answers, and more questions, next time at Unanswered. Continue here to part 7.
*The Dutch registration cards list Friedel as Frieda Kühnt rather than Frieda Kuhnt. Based on my research, that’s a simple mistake, and Frieda Kühnt does indeed refer to Frieda Kuhnt.
**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.
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The connections blow my mind. You have written so much about my maternal grandmother's cousin, Bernhard Lewitt, and now I see the informant for the death for Leo Lewin in Theresienstadt was my paternal great-aunt Elise (Ly) Eisfelder, who somehow survived three years in that place. But it broke her health and she died in Berlin in 1948, aged just 62.
Amazing to see how much of the almost 9 year gap between postcards can be filled with records. Everything that happened between that time! Including war ending and marriage. Also interesting to learn more about Amsterdam during that time…