The Levenbach and Goudeket families

I was born on 28 July 1930, in Bentveld, Netherlands. A sister to three-year-old Joost, and a daughter to a much-loved mother and father, Adolf Levenbach and Elisabeth Levenbach-Goudeket. I was very happy, I had friends, and I went to school. Of course, there were also less pleasant things, but these were insignificant. All these years, we lived at the same address until in 1940, the war broke out and trouble began. At the beginning of 1942, we were forced to leave the house in Bentveld, with its contents, and move to Amsterdam. We left home, and eleven years of reality suddenly became the past.

My mother, Elisabeth Goudeket-Levenbach, was born in Amsterdam on 17 July 1894.

Her parents were Lion Goudeket (1855–1935) and Mietje Cohen (1860–1935).

Elisabeth Goudeket, called Liesje, studied law at the University of Amsterdam from 1912 to 1919. She graduated on 1 July 1919 as a law doctor.

She was a jurist and worked in the beginning as a senior official in the Municipal administration. Later she worked at the Society for Social Work for The Benefit of Jewish Patients in Amsterdam.

She was a Zionist and was a member of the Association of Jewish Women for Practical Work in Palestine and a member of the committee working to protect Jewish girls.

My father, Adolf Levenbach, was the son of Joseph and Rosa Levenbach and was born in Amsterdam on 15 June 1891.

Adolf, called Dolf for short, was the youngest of four brothers.

Max was the oldest, George was 2nd, and Willem was the 3rd brother. Willem died very young from an untreated appendicitis. I didn’t know him, but I did know his wife Lenny and their son Will, who was three months old when his father died. They survived the Holocaust because Lenny wasn’t Jewish.

My father went to the United States as a young man and travelled through Russia in 1916 to 1918. Upon his father’s death in 1921, Dolf inherited his share of his father’s business, but there was no real place for him in the business as a young partner. He left the family business and used the money he received to buy a business that unfortunately went bankrupt after a few years. He later became a retail agent for luxury goods.

My mother’s parents died in 1935 when I was five. The only memory I have of them is that we went to visit them in Amsterdam, and my grandmother asked me if I wanted candy. I nodded eagerly, even though I didn’t like sweets at all. I never got the candy. I complained about it to my mother, who explained to me that old people sometimes forget their promise. Nevertheless, I kept a grudge against her. But no longer. Gradually, as I get older, I am making the same mistakes, and can understand her.

My paternal grandfather died before I was born, but I remember my grandmother very well and loved her very much. I went regularly to visit her in Zandvoort, which is not far from our home in Bentveld. The fact that she had two houses, one in Zandvoort and one in Amsterdam, made a huge impression on me. The highlight was the apartment in Amsterdam, with two bathrooms! One by the front door and one at the end of the corridor, which seemed to me to be endless. I talked about it regularly with my friends so they would know about it. Today it is no longer very impressive to me, on the contrary.

My grandmother loved me very much because, after four sons and five grandchildren, the two granddaughters, my cousin Els and I, were something special to her. During the war, she came to stay for a short time at our home in Bentveld because she had to leave her home in Zandvoort. It wasn’t easy for my mother, Grandma got involved in everything, and I still feel my mother’s impatience with her. In the summer of 1941, Grandma died a natural death at the age of 80. I was 11 years old, and I was very sad. Today I see it differently: a lot of suffering was spared. If she had survived, she would probably have died in the gas chambers, and if not, she would have had to bear the great sorrow for the death of her three sons in various camps.