Ilse Loewenberg papers

Ilse Loewenberg (1908-2001) was born to shop owners Simon Berghausen (1870-1943) and Hannchen (Goldschmidt) Berghausen (b. 1880) in Büren, Germany. She had three sisters, Margarete (1906-1943) Carla (b. 1911), and Lieselotte (1921-1943). Ilse lived in Büren until 1938 when her parents were forced to sell their store due to persecution by the Nazis. Ilse and her family moved to Berlin, Germany shortly after. She tried to immigrate to England, but was not successful. In the early years of the war, she was a forced labor worker at a Siemens factory. During this time, she met and married her second husband, Gerhard Grün (1906-1943). They joined the underground resistance group Gemeinschaft für Frieden und Aufbau (Association for Peace and Development), and survived with the help of Germans who helped them hide and procure false identification papers. Ilse was arrested and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in February 1943. While on the train, she escaped by jumping out of the car near Ruda, Poland. She went back to Berlin and continued to hide. Gerhard was arrested and sent to the Sachenhausen concentration camp near Berlin, where he was shot on March 16, 1943. She was arrested again on October 19th, 1944 and remained in prisons in Berlin until 1945 when she was liberated by Russian troops. She immigrated to the United States in 1948 and settled in Forest Hills, New York. She later married Ludwig Loewenberg (d. 1971). Simon Berghausen was transported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on June 17, 1942 and he was killed on July 27, 1943. Lieselotte, Margarete, and her mother were all transported to Auschwitz in 1943 where they perished. Her other sister, Carla, immigrated to England prior to the war, and later immigrated to the United States.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Ilse Loewenberg donated the Ilse Loewenberg papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1995.