Levy, Irma

The Levy family can be traced back to Levy Joseph Levy, a businessman, and his wife Fanny née Alexander. Their son Abraham was born in 1837 and later gained citizen status in Hamburg, where he founded A. Levy Metallgeschäft, a metal smelting business located at Ausschläger Elbdeich 74/76 in Hamburg. Abraham married Emma née Freudenthal in 1876, and they had two sons, Ludwig and Joseph.

Ludwig Levy was born on March 10, 1875 in Hamburg. In 1906, Ludwig and his brother Joseph took over the family business, A. Levy Metallgeschäft. In 1907, Ludwig married Ida Winterberger (born October 3, 1883 in Winterberg to the businessman Moses Winterberger and his wife Rickchen). The couple lived at Isestraße 67 and had one son, Hartwig (born April 11, 1908). Hartwig studied law in Germany and immigrated to New York in the 1930s, where he changed his name to Howard.

Ludwig served in the Germany army during World War I and was awarded the Iron Cross. He was taken ill during the war and suffered bad health thereafter as a result.

Ida’s sister Else Irma Levy lived together with Ludwig and Ida. Between 1938 and 1941, the three of them attempted to emigrate, but their efforts were unsuccessful. Else died of a serious illness on July 28, 1940. Ludwig was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in March of 1938 but later released. Ludwig and Ida redoubled their efforts to emigrate, collecting a great deal of necessary papers by November 1941.

Ludwig and Ida were deported to Theresienstadt on July 15, 1942 and then to Minsk on September 21, 1942, where they perished.

Ludwig gave his personal papers to a non-Jewish friend shortly before his deportation. In October of 1994, Günter Parrhysius, the son of this friend, gave these papers to the Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland in Heidelberg. From there, the papers were passed on to Irma Levy, the widow of Hartwig (Howard) Levy living in New York, who then donated the papers to the Leo Baeck Institute.

References

Yad Vashem. “Ida Levy.” The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. Retrieved 3 April 2013 from http://db.yadvashem.org/names/nameDetails.html?itemId=3924439&language=en

From the guide to the Ludwig Levy Collection, 1837-1942, (Leo Baeck Institute)