Ernst LÖWY was born on January 17, 1900 in Netluk (Czech Netluky or Pnětluky), Leitmeritz (Litoměřice) district of Bohemia (then in Austria-Hungary, now in the Czech Republic). He was the second of the five children of the Jewish couple Anna LÖWY née Friedmann and Ferdinand LÖWY.1
Ferdinand Löwy, a shopkeeper in Netluk, had two brothers, Rudolf and Oswald who lived in Salzburg since the 1880s and had businesses there.2
In October 1914, shortly after the start of WWI, the 14 years old Ernst came to Salzburg for an apprenticeship in his uncle Oswald LÖWY’s haberdashery and knitwear shop at 6 Mirabellplatz.
Ernst stayed in Salzburg after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and didn’t go to newly independent Czechoslovakia where he was now a citizen. He never got Austrian citizenship or local citizenship rights in Salzburg, but that didn’t stop him from working there as a sales clerk, traveling salesman, warehouse manager and chauffeur.
While traveling he met Ida Pick – who had been born in Ottnang am Hausruck (Upper Austria) on February 8, 1901, and they got married in the Linz synagogue on November 12, 1924. Their son Herbert was born in Salzburg on August 27, 1926 (the birth was recorded in the registration book of the Linz Jewish Community).
The LÖWY family lived on the third floor of the house of the Jewish family FURST3 at 5 Linzergasse in Salzburg until their expulsion by the Nazis in 1938.
A document from the Jewish community of Salzburg dated June 24, 1938, sheds light on the desperate situation of the LÖWY family, who had no source of income since March 1938 and therefore urgently requested financial support to be able to flee – »together« and »no matter where«, it says in handwriting.
The destitute LÖWY family hoped in vain for a guarantee (affidavit) and passage on a ship to reach the free world.
In November 1938, the LÖWY family, expelled from Salzburg by the Gestapo, fled to Praha (Prague), at that time still the capital of the free Czechoslovak Republic, but which came under Nazi rule as the »Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia« in March 1939.
The address registered by the German police for the LÖWY family was: 5 Truhlářská street, Praha (Prague) II.
The Germans also documented that Arnošt (Ernst) LÖWY and Ida Löwyová were deported from Prague to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on October 24, 1942 (Transport Ca), and their son Herbert LÖWY was deported to there on December 22, 1942 (Transport Ck).
Further research reveals that 43-year-old Arnošt (Ernst) LÖWY, his 42-year-old wife Ida Löwyová, and their 17-year-old son Herbert LÖWY, numbered 3321, 3322, and 3323, were on transport »Dm«, which left the Theresienstadt concentration camp on September 6, 1943, and arrived at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on September 8, 1943. They were held in Section B IIb, which had the cynical name »Theresienstadt Family Camp« and which served the SS as a cover for their mass murder during visits by the International Red Cross – until they were gassed after a six-month »grace period«.4
On the night of March 9-10, 1944, the surviving prisoners from transport »Dm« were murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers. However, the individual death dates of Ernst, Ida, and Herbert LÖWY, like those of all prisoners in section B IIb, are not documented.
Among the victims of the Shoah were also Ernst Löwy’s younger brother Otto, born on December 14, 1907 in Netluk, and Ernst Löwy’s aunt Amalie Löwy, who lived at 12 Franz-Josef-Straße in Salzburg, until 1938. Amalie LÖWY was murdered in the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp.
As for Ida LÖWY’s Upper Austrian relatives, it is known that in March 1938 her father Bernhard PICK committed suicide in his Thomasroith home and her sister Ludmilla was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944.
Finally, it should be noted that in 1968, the Jewish Community of Salzburg published a commemorative volume: Salzburg’s Rebuilt Synagogue, including a list of the Jewish residents of Salzburg who were expelled in 1938.
For some unknown reason, the LÖWY family of Linzer Gasse 5 is missing from this publication.
In 2007, in the presence of the President of the Jewish Community Marko Feingold, Stumbling Blocks for the Shoah victims Ernst, Ida and Herbert LÖWY were laid in front of the old doorway of the »Aryanized« house at 5 Linzer Gasse, which now displays the metal signs of two German nationalist fraternities.
1 Anna LÖWY, neé Friedmann (died 1915), and Ferdinand LÖWY (died 1935) had five children: Emilie Peschka (1898-1967), Ernst (1901-1943 Shoah), Rudolf (1901-1959), Berta Hromadka (1905-1934) and Otto (1907-1942 Shoah).
2 Ferdinand LÖWY’s older brother Rudolf (1856-1935) was president of the Jewish Community of Salzburg from 1911 to 1919 and from 1924 to 1935; his son Otto was president from 1935 to 1938, and his son Ludwig in 1967/68. Ferdinand LÖWY’s younger brother Oswald (1868-1935), with whom his nephew Ernst LÖWY worked, was a member of the board of the Jewish Community of Salzburg.
3 The house at Linzer Gasse 5, where the Ernst LÖWY family lived until November 1938, was owned from 1892 to 1939 by the Jewish family Arthur FÜRST, who lived in Salzburg and managed to flee to the USA in March 1939. Arthur’s sister, Hedwig Bisentz, co-owner of the house at Linzer Gasse 5, was murdered in Theresienstadt in April 1943. The house, which had been »Aryanised« in 1938, was not restituted after liberation.
4 From 6 September 1943 to 18 May 1944, seven transports carrying a total of 17,517 Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto went to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, section B IIb, which served as the SS’s »Theresienstadt family camp« to camouflage their mass murder: »special treatment with a six-month quarantine« (gas chamber after a six-month ‘grace period’).
Sources
- Jewish Community Linz Registration books (Family Pick)
- Linz and Salzburg City, and Salzburg State archives (police registration files)
- Jewish Community Salzburg 6. 24. 1938 to the Welfare Center of the Jewish Community of Vienna (application for support)
- Salzburgs wiederaufgebaute Synagoge (Hg. Mendel Karin-Karger, Judaica Verlag, Salzburg 1968, pp. 139-143
- Národni Archive Prague (Czech National archive)
- Theresienstadt Memorial Books
- Institut Terezinske iniciativy
- Shoah databases DÖW and Yad Vashem
Translation: Stan Nadel
Stumbling Stone
Laid 22.08.2007 at Salzburg, Linzer Gasse 5
Registration form of the Löwy family
Registration form (backside) of the Löwy family
Herbert LöwyPhoto: Institut Terezinske iniciativy