The Ahrend siblings were all born in Frankfurt am Main: Bernhard in 1927, Miriam exactly one year later, and Benjamin in 1930. Most of their years in Frankfurt were spent at Gwinnerstrasse 22 in the city's Ostend, though the family was living at Ostendstrasse 63 by 1938.1
The father, Sigmund, a war veteran2 and wholesaler, was arrested in the Arbeitsscheu Reich raids of June 1938 and sent to Buchenwald for two months.3 His death in September, two weeks after he was released,4 left the family without a breadwinner. Likely seeing no alternative, Jenni (Falk) Ahrend entrusted her children to Frankfurt's Israelitische Waisenanstalt, the orthodox orphanage on Röderbergweg where her sister-in-law, Elli Ahrend, worked as head of the girls' section.5
After Kristallnacht, Isidor and Rosa Marx, the couple who ran the orphanage, scrambled to get their wards out of Germany. The Ahrend siblings were chosen for the first of the Kindertransports organized by the Marxes, arriving in the Netherlands with around 20 other children on November 22, 1938. In Amsterdam, the boys lived at the Nederlands-Israëlitisch Jongensweeshuis at Amstel 21,6 while Miriam was taken in by the Portugees-Israëlitisch Meisjesweeshuis on the Nieuwe Prinsengracht.7
Miriam Ahrend is mentioned in a memoir written by Jutta Levitus, a friend from Frankfurt who was one of few children on the November 22nd Kindertransport to survive the war. The book notes that they belonged to a small group of girls from the Waisenanstalt whom Meta Jawetz-Oppenheimer, also originally from Frankfurt, had taken under her wing and would often bring on excursions around Amsterdam.
According to Jutta, Miriam was a classmate at the Palacheschool;8 her academic path after this isn't clear. Both Ahrend boys went to the NIJW's own school before attending the Joodsche HBS - Bernhard enrolled there in 1941, Benjamin in 1942.9
While in Amsterdam, the Ahrends likely had contact with their first cousins from Cologne, Jettchen Cahn and Mirjam Pakter-Cahn - born to Jenni Ahrend's sister, Rachel (Falk) Cahn - who had fled Germany around the same time they did.10, 11
As part of a larger operation aimed at "emptying" Jewish care institutions throughout the Netherlands, the Nazis raided all five of Amsterdam's Jewish orphanages on February 10, 1943. Hundreds of children and staff were arrested, brought to the train station near the Panamakade, then sent on to Westerbork.12 Bernhard, Benjamin, and Miriam Ahrend spent nearly a month here before they were packed onto another train, this time bound for Poland. Of the 1105 people on Westerbork's first transport to the Sobibor extermination camp, not a single one survived the war.
1. Frankfurt am Main address books, 1929-1939
2. Sigmund Ahrend's Buchenwald records note his membership in the Jüdischer Frontkämpferbund, a Jewish war veterans' group alternately known as the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten.
3. Various Buchenwald files, ITS Arolsen
4. Death certificate for Sigmund Ahrend, ISG Frankfurt am Main
5. Entry on Jenny Ahrend, Gedenkbuch für die Karlsruher Juden
6. NIJW staff notebook, p. 124, Amsterdam city archives
7. PIMW resident list, Amsterdam city archives
8. Jutta Rosen-Levitus, Jutta: te midden van vreemden
9. Joodsche HBS student cards, Amsterdam city archives
10. Die Bahn erinnern, p.8, Hauptbahnhof Köln
11. Bernhard Ahrend's Joodsche Raad card includes a reference to the Pakters, the family his cousin Mirjam married into, and their address.
12. Joodsche Raad minutes, Feb 11 1943, NIOD
