GERMAN INTERMARRIAGE 
TESTIMONIALS

The Lewin family is no stranger to Nazi persecution and family struggle under the Third Reich. Gerson and Rosalie Lewin, having met in America after each was born in Prussia, married in Boston, Massachusetts in January of 1888. Together, the couple had five children in America before immigrating to Germany before 1897: The eldest was Moritz, born in 1888, followed by Eduard in 1890, Paul in 1891, Josef in 1893, and Mathilde, called Tilly, in 1894.  After moving, the couple had five more children: Betty in 1897, Anna in 1899, Max in 1901, Julie in 1902 and Emilie in 1905. The Lewin family thereafter settled in Berlin and was very much a part of German society. Gerson became a member of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith and his sons “like many other men of Jewish origin”, volunteered for the Imperial Army during the First World War. Gerson and Rosalie, along with their five children born in Berlin, all became naturalized German citizens in 1917.  When, after serving in the war for Germany and earning the Iron Cross, Josef in particular tried for German citizenship. He was unable to pay the fee of 900 marks and was considered a stateless citizen, a title that passed to his children when they were born. In adulthood, most of the Lewin children lived near their parents in Prenzlauer Berg. Anna Lewin died in 1931 from illness and was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Weißensee. Her burial site is marked by a stone donated by the community. Max Lewin owned a small leather factory in the Jewish clothing quarter on Mohrenstrasse and was the only family member to remain relatively wealthy. Moritz Lewin had three children, while Betty, Julie and Emilie each had a son.  Eduard Lewin remained unmarried and was considered “the black sheep of the family”; he had little contact with his siblings and mother. Tilly Lewin also remained single and later ran the house for her mother. She helped to raise her nephew Lothar, the son of Emilie Lewin, born in 1931. Though said to be “in love”, Tilly’s suitor was "Aryan" and the couple was unable to marry under the racial laws of the Nazis. They hoped to marry “at some point”. Julie, after divorcing her first husband, moved her young son to a children's home. She became an actress at the Jewish Theater in Kreuzberger Kommandantenstrasse. While there, she met her second husband. 

 

Josef Lewin, the fourth son of Gerson and Rosalie, married Else Kreuger, a Protestant woman from Oranienburg, in 1922. The intermarried couple had four daughters: Ruth was born in 1922, Erika in 1923, Inge in 1927, and Margot in 1930. Having very little money, Josef’s family initially lived in Lietzmannstrasse in Mitte, “in an area with a large Jewish population”. In 1934, they moved to Friedrichshain, at Höchst Strasse 2, to a two-room apartment through to the end of the war. Josef worked as a stage worker at the Unter den Linden opera house until the rise of the Third Reich. He was fired in 1933 for being Jewish and was unable to find steady employment, occasionally working smaller jobs when able. Else soon became the sole income earner for their family, often working from morning until night time. She worked sewing for the Jewish master tailor Rosenstein in Barnimstrasse and later doing laundry, delivering newspapers, making clothes for neighbors and accepting any work that came up. Although Else was Protestant, she often participated in her husband’s faith, “fulfilling all religious duties” and attending the synagogue on Rykestrasse. Within the home, Else helped to foster the Jewish customs and traditions, such as lighting the Shabbat candles every Sabbath. Unfortunately, however, the shortage of time and money prevented kosher cooking in the home. Erika, the second daughter of Josef and Else, described the Jewish community around them as very helpful, always looking out for the “welfare of its members”. Some congregation members at the church would give the Lewin family money or food, while Josef received five marks from the Jewish owned Garbaty cigarette factory on high holidays. Not to mention, some of the family’s furniture and clothing came from the clothing store of the Jewish community on Choriner Strasse. Ruth, the oldest daughter of Josef and Else, was visually impaired and attended the school for the visually impaired on Georgenkirchstrasse.  Erika attended elementary school, also on Georgenkirchstrasse, at number 3, and was allowed to finish school in 1937. Out of the four daughters, only Ruth and Erika were able to finish school, the younger two prevented by Jewish school closures. By 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were established and immediately placed a pressure on Else to leave her Jewish husband and children. When officials asked her to divorce Josef, she replied with, "I have four children with my husband and I will not leave him. Race is bullshit!” Erika recalls the gradual and very intense isolation of Jewish individuals. At school and in the neighborhood, she and her sisters were bullied and harassed. At school, her grades suffered. Due to the family’s poverty, Erika and her sisters were unable to buy or read newspapers and books and were largely unaware of the politics playing overhead. After 1938, the Jewish pogrom put an end to any Jewish involvement in the community at large. Erika had just started an apprenticeship as a tailor with Frau Lehn in Friedrichshain in the summer of 1939, but when Jews were prohibited from learning trades, Frau Lehn had to fire her.

 

In an attempt to regain his once-held American citizenship, Josef applied to the American consulate. By March 1, 1940, however, they informed Josef that he had forfeited his citizenship in 1916 “with the oath of the flag on Germany.”  At the same time, the Nazi authorities treated the Lewin’s statelessness with increased suspicion. After Nazi Germany declared war on the USA in December 1941, the family had to report to the police station every week at a prescribed time in accordance with the “Ordinance on the Treatment of Foreigners”. Soon after, Ruth was ordered into forced labor for the Schedes Company, a mica factory on Blücherstrasse. Erika worked for the Schlein family as a housemaid. Mr. Schlein was Jewish, his wife was Christian; they ran pensions for Jews in Lankwitzer Nicolaistrasse and in Brandenburger Strass. By May of 1940, the pensions were no longer allowed to exist for Jews, and Erika was forced to find new work. She went on to Siemens near the Jungfernheide S-Bahn station. She was made to solder and spot weld small electrical parts, earning 58 pfennigs in hourly wages. Josef and Inge were also assigned to do forced labor. Only Margot excluded.

 

Rosaline Lewin died in 1938 at the age of 77.  She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Weißensee. Tilly, who didn’t work, could no longer maintain the apartment at 29 Metzer Strasse on her own, and Josef and Else took her and Lothar in.  As a result, there were eight people living in the two rooms of the Lewin apartment. Sleeping arrangements were difficult, and there was just one wash bowl in the kitchen; the cold water for the coals was just enough to cook food. One by one, the members of the large Lewin family were targeted by the Reich. Emilie was taken by Nazi officials to Ravensbrück concentration camp. She perished in May of 1942. Denny and Salo Levin, along with their dad, Max Lewin were deported to Auschwitz on the 26th transport and consequently murdered. Only Max's exact date of death is known: he died on April 2, 1943. Gerson Lewin was deported to Theresienstadt on the second large elderly transport in September 1942. He perished there at the age of 85. Tilly and Lothar were expected at the assembly camp on Levetzowstrasse, afterwards taken to Trawniki with many others and murdered in March of 1942. Julie and her husband were murdered in Riga in December of 1942.

 

In February of 1943, Erika was arrested from her place of forced labor and taken into custody near the Hermann Göring barracks. There, she saw her Uncle Paul and Aunt Toni, likely for the last time. The next day, she was taken with the other women to be held at Rosenstrasse:

“The desperation was as great as the fear that the SS would shoot us. In the morning we had to start again. We were taken to the community hall on Rosenstrasse. There they might lock me up with them.  Fifty women and girls in a large, empty room on the second floor, where we lay in several rows on the floor, huddled next to each other, only our coats as a base. There was a bucket for the urine.  One bucket for fifty people and the windows were locked!  We neither saw nor heard what was happening in or in front of the house.  Only once did I receive a signal from outside.  A steward asked me for the house key.  Otherwise my mother wouldn't be able to get into the house.  That was, of course, a trick of hers.  That way, she could be certain that I was indeed here.  Many women had gathered in front of the parish hall, whose husbands and children had been dragged there from work by the Nazis.  Mother was also standing in front of the house.  My two sisters, arrested like me, had already come home on Sunday from another assembly camp, the Ballhaus "Clou" in Mohrenstrasse. But father and I were still missing. The constant presence of so many women - that was a real demonstration!... They even closed the nearby Börse train station. But for some inexplicable reason the women were not simply chased apart by force.”

 

Erika found her dad in the same Rosenstrasse building she was held at, but he was released before she was. She was able to recall the bombing of Berlin by Allied forces on March 2nd and being sent to sit in isolation by the Nazi guards. When she was finally released, she ran home and heard her mother’s account of the Rosenstrasse protest. For a period of time during the war, the Lewin’s hosted an intermarried Jewish man, Mr. Nowakowski, to keep him from the Reich. After Fabrikaktion and the Rosenstrasse protest, the Lewin family remained cautious. Most of the family remained in forced labor; Erika, for example, was sent to work for Georg Gottlieb. His flag factory in Alexandrinenstrasse manufactured various military and civil Nazi units, including flags, banners and pennants. Erika was the only Jewish individual employed at the factory and was forbidden from sharing her status with the other workers. The factory was bombed in August of 1944 and Erika was without a position. She soon after received a letter from the Berlin police chief, requiring her to leave the country within eight weeks. Luckily, she found another position, this time at a uniform factory at 137 Grosse Frankfurter Strasse. Her job-related injuries placed Erika in a position of danger, and she was hidden in another town until the end of the war. Josef Lewin passed away in July of 1945 from terminal illness, just two months after Victory in Europe day.