Gerda and Sylva Löwenstein papers

Gerda Löwenstein was born in 1928 in Berlin to Edgar and Dora Levy (nee Brasch). Her father was a salesman and World War I veteran. Her mother lost two brothers in World War I. Both parents perished at Auschwitz. Gerda was sent to England on a Kindertransport and lived with the Wilkies family in Coventry. She studied nursing in Bristol, immigrated to the United States after the war, and married Bodo Löwenstein (1922-2004), who had immigrated to the United States from Berlin in 1938. Gerda’s parents are believed to have been killed at Auschwitz.

Sylva Löwenstein(1921-1973) was Gerda Löwenstein's äsister-in-law. Sylva was born in Berlin to Arthur and Edith (nee Schulz) Löwenstein. Her brother, Bodo Löwenstein, immigrated to the United States 1938. She and her parents were deported to Theresienstadt in July 1942. She and her mother volunteered to join her father on an October 1944 transport that was supposed to be a work transport to Germany but that really went to Auschwitz, where her parents were immediately sent to the gas chamber. Three weeks later Sylva was transferred to Birnbäumel on a work detail. In January 1945 she was sent on a forced march to Gross Rosen, where she was liberated the following month by the Russian Army. She was taken to Poland where she lied to the authorities in order to be allowed to return to Czechoslovakia and was later taken to Winzer and then Deggendorf to wait for her chance to immigrate to the United States.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Gertrude Lowenstein

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Gerda Lowenstein

Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

Gerda Löwenstein donated the Gerda and Sylva Löwenstein papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1995 and 2012. The accession formerly cataloged as 2012.349.1 has been incorporated into this collection.