Gertrud Fanny Lewin, geb. Samson

Gertrud Fanny Samson was born in Stuttgart on May 27, 1911, the daughter of the Jewish merchant and factory owner Wilhelm Samson and his wife Else. When she was seven, Gertrud moved with her parents and her sister Lisbeth, a year younger than her, to Munich. From May 1922 to March 1928 she attended the Luisengymnasium high school, after which she went to business school and became a shorthand typist. In November 1934 Gertrud Samson married the merchant Rudolf Martin Lewin, who ran a firm at Sonnenstrasse 12 selling office furniture, office machinery and other office requirements. The couple had two sons, Hans Berthold, born in 1935 and Michael, born in 1938.
It was at the latest the “Kristallnacht” pogroms on November 9-10, 1938 that made it clear to Gertrud and Rudolf Lewin that as a Jewish family they no longer had any future in Germany. Rudolf Lewin and his father-in-law were taken to Dachau concentration camp on November 10, 1938. At the same time, the Nazi regime deprived the family of their financial foundation. Rudolf Lewin was forced to close his firm at the end of 1938. Because he was able to prove that he had papers for emigrating to England, he was released from the concentration camp in January 1939 and was permitted to leave the country for Britain in March 1939. Gertrud Lewin and her sons now lived with her parents, firstly at Hohenzollernstrasse 104, and later at Rumfordstrasse 8. Desperately Gertrud Lewin tried to follow her husband, but in vain. The Gestapo (secret state police) deported her with six-year-old Hans and three-year-old Michael to Kaunas on November 25, 1941. The SS shot them there five days later.
Gertrud Lewin’s parents did not survive the Nazi period either. Wilhelm and Else Samson were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp or the Warsaw Ghetto on July 13, 1942 and murdered. Gertrud Lewin’s sister Lisbeth managed to get away to the USA. Rudolf Lewin later moved from Britain to Israel and died in Haifa in 1992. He commemorated his family with Pages of Testimony. (Text : Theresa Kappl, Emiliana Pietzsch, Julia Sailer, Emilia Schauer; editor: C. Fritsche; translation: C. Hales)