Book

Beatrice (Trixie) Westheimer was born on June 5, 1933, in Berlin, Germany, the only child of Julius and Meta Boas Westheimer. Meta was born in 1904 to Orthodox Jewish parents, Bernhard (d. 1932) and Johanna Baruch Boas, and had three sisters, Hella, Margot, and Frieda. In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany and throughout the 1930s the persecution of Jews became increasingly punitive and violent. In March 1939, Beatrice’s family, including her maternal grandmother, Johanna, and her maternal aunt, Margot Lewy, and her husband, Werner, and son, Bernt, escaped to Brussels, Belgium. They were smuggled across the border with the assistance of two men hired as guides by her father and uncle. They joined her mother’s oldest sister and her family, Frieda, Walter, and Henri Hurwitz, who lived in Ukkle. Her mother had one other sister, Hella Tausk, who with her husband, Walter, had immigrated to the United States earlier in the 1930s. In December 1939, the Lewy family received permission to immigrate to the US and they left for New York.

Germany conquered Belgium in May 1940 and immediately enacted anti-Jewish legislation. On May 10, 1940, the Germans arrested Beatrice’s father, Julius, and her uncle Walter. Julius was sent to Camp Agde near Montpelier, France, and later to Rivesaltes internment camp. In February 1941, he escaped from the camp and returned to his family in Belgium. Walter was sent to Gurs internment camp in France and on August 6, 1942, was deported to Auschwitz, where he was killed. In July 1942, Beatrice and her cousin Henri were told by their parents that they were going on vacation. Her father took them to the village of Ottignies to live with two Catholic sisters, Jeanne and Adele Duchet. Jeanne explained to Beatrice and Henri that their last name would now be Duchet. The villagers were told that they were Jeanne's niece and nephew. Her father was able to visit once, in the fall of 1942, when he brought the rest of their belongings and worked out the longterm living arrangements for Beatrice and Henri. The children were baptized as Catholics on October 2, 1942. The priest, Father Vass, knew of the children’s situation and helped keep them safe in the village.

In February 1943, Beatrice’s parents were arrested and sent to the Mechelen ( Malines) transit camp in Belgium. They were soon loaded onto transport XX for Auschwitz concentration camp. They were involved in an escape plan organized by the Belgian resistance. Most of the escapees were gunned down by the German guards. Beatrice's father was shot and eventually died in a nearby home. Her mother was sent to a hospital where she was denounced and recaptured and, on February 26, deported to Auschwitz, where she was killed. Her grandmother and her aunt Frida were able to avoid deportations because their non-Jewish landlady helped them live in hiding in her attic.

Belgium was liberated by Allied Forces in September 1944. That December, Beatrice and Henri returned to Brussels to live with their grandmother and Henri’s mother. In May 1946, Beatrice and her grandmother immigrated to the United States, where Beatrice was adopted by her aunt and uncle, Margot and Werner Lewy. Beatrice became a teacher. After her adoptive father, Werner Lewy died, age 85, on June 12, 1990, Beatrice learned many details about her past in papers that he had saved. Beatrice had always felt that her parents abandoned her, and she had kept a diary during the war, but now she could understand her history more clearly. In 1997, she wrote a memoir of her experience, Never to Be Forgotten: A Young Girl's Holocaust Memoir.