Hans Oppenheimer letter

Johann (Hans) Oppenheimer (1901-1945) was a Jewish bank official who was living in Berlin during the time when the Nazis came to power. As a result of the increasing persecution of Jews, Hans’ wife Friederike Frust Oppenheimer (1902-1945) and their children, Paul (1928-2007), and Rudi (1931-), went to live with family in London, England, where a third child, Eve (1936-) was born. Hans, who was not allowed to work in England, immigrated to Holland. In 1936, the family reunited in Hemestede, North Holland and Hans again obtained work as a banker. There the family lived a fairly normal life until the German invasion in 1940. After the invasion, the family moved to Amsterdam and in June 1943 was deported to Westerbork transit camp. Because Eve had been born in England and was technically a citizen of an Allied country, Hans and his family were given a “blue stamp,” meaning the Germans hoped to exchange them for German prisoners of war. For this reason, the family remained in Westerbork for seven months. In February 1944 Hans and his family were deported to Bergen-Belsen and sent to the “star camp” (Sternlager) reserved for Jews with foreign visas or passports. Hans worked outside the camp in a labor detachment and eventually died of disease and starvation in March 1945. Friederike died a few months earlier in January 1945 of the same cause. All three children survived the Holocaust. They were reunited in Leipzig and traveled back to Holland before obtaining visas to go to England.