Lewkowicz family. Collection

Szlama Lewkowicz was born in Nowo-Radomsk (today Radomsko), Poland, on 12 October 1893. He became a tailor and in February 1918 he married Gitla Firstenfeld, born in 1894 in Sziewierz, Poland. On 19 March 1926 Szlama Lewkowicz arrived in Belgium. He settled in Antwerp and found a job as a tailor at the Saint-Jacques warehouse in Kipdorp. In August 1926 he was able to obtain visa for his wife and their three children: Jakob (born on 22 June 1920 in Czestochowa, Poland), Perla (born on 22 July 1923 in Czestochowa, Poland) and Moszek (born on 7 March 1925 in Czestochowa, Poland). The family arrived in Belgium in September 1926 and made home in Borgerhout. Youngest child Rosine Regine Lewkowicz was born there on 20 January 1934. The family still lived in Antwerp when Nazi-Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940. At the beginning of August 1942, when the convocations for forced labour were being distributed, the family moved from Antwerp to Saint-Gilles, Brussels. Records from the Association of Jews in Belgium show that the three oldest Lewkowicz children – Jakob, Perla and Moszek – were indeed on the list of persons living in Antwerp for who an Arbeitseinsatzbefehl had been drafted. The letters, however, were never delivered since the Lewkowicz family had moved to Brussels. Szlama Lewkowicz and his wife Gitla Firstenfeld were arrested during the only large anti-Jewish raid in Brussels (3 on 4 September 1942). They were deported from the Dossin barracks via Transport IX on 12 September 1942. Neither survived deportation. Their children Jakob, Perla and Rosine Lewkowicz were arrested as well. None of them survived deportation from the Dossin barracks to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport XXII A on 20 September 1943. Moszek Lewkowicz was the only known survivor of the Lewkowicz family.

Misses Lewkowicz donated the originals of both documents in this collection to the Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistance, predecessor of Kazerne Dossin, in 1997. The six photos were only digitised and the originals remained in possession of the Lewkowicz family.

Misses Lewkowicz, relative of Moszek Aron Lewkowicz, 1997