Annemarie Loewe Durra papers

Annemarie Loewe was born on June 23, 1909, in Breslau, Germany (Wroclaw, Poland), to Oskar and Margarete Kassel Loewe, and was Polish. Annemarie was a professional cartoonist. She sang in the choir at the Breslau Synagogue. She married the director of the choir, Wilhelm (Willi) Durra on January 7, 1941. Willi was born on December 7, 1882, in Brieg, Germany (Brzeg, Poland), to Benjamin and Minna Schlesinger Durra. This was his second marriage; he had three children with his first wife, who died in 1920 during the Spanish flu epidemic. Willi was an independent businessman.

Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Anti-Jewish decrees were enacted to severely restrict Jewish participation in German society. In 1933, Breslau had a Jewish community of about 20,000, one of the largest in Germany. The main synagogue was destroyed by fire during the Kristallnacht pogrom on November 9-10, 1938. The Jewish population now numbered only a little over 10,000. Those still in Breslau were in forced labor service. On April 2, 1943, Annemarie and Willi were deported on transport 57-IX/4 to Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp in German occupied Czechoslovakia. The camp was primarily a collection center for deportations to ghettos and killings centers in the east, but Annemarie continued to draw and Willi directed a choir of inmates. On October 16, 1944, Willi was deported. Annemarie was liberated on May 9, 1945, when the Soviet Army entered the camp, two days after Germany’s surrender.

On July 16, Annemarie was transferred to Deggendorf displaced persons camp in the American zone in Germany, arriving there on August 9. Other survivors from Theresienstadt were at the camp, and there was an active cultural community. Annemarie sang in some of the theatrical performances. She contributed illustrations to the Deggendorf Center Review, a newspaper issued by the Department of Culture of the Jewish Committee in the camp.

Annemarie learned that Willi had been killed in fall 1944, not long after he arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Late in 1946, she filled out a US Army questionnaire about her status as a displaced person and expressed interest in emigration. On February 10, 1950, she boarded the USAT General J H McRae in the port of Bremerhaven and arrived in America on February 21. She settled near extended family in California. Several of her drawings from Theresienstadt and Deggendorf were included in books about the Holocaust published in the early 2000's. Annemarie, age 93, died on April 25, 2003, in Oakland, California.