Addition

Kurt Herzfeld, all I know

Never forget

Kurt Herzfeld Bocholt i/W c 1930s

My half great uncle, Kurt Herzfeld, was born on May 15, 1913 in Bocholt DL. Here is what little I know about Uncle Kurt, all from my own research as his name was rarely mentioned to me. Kurt became an uncle for the first and only time when he was 13 and my father, Walter Stern, was born. The multi-generational family lived together in their Bocholt home. Kurt was a photographer, presumably responsible for the only 2 known photos of the inside of the Bocholt synagogue. He lived in a couple of other German cities somewhere between the ages of 18 and 21, then he returned home to Bocholt. At the age of 25, Kurt escaped DL with the rest of his family, over the border to Holland. He was the only family member carrying a passport when they entered Megchellen and then spent 6 months in Gendringen. The family moved to Enschede in 1939 and in May 1940, Kurt and his brother-in-law (my grandfather, Moritz Stern) were arrested from their home in Enschede. Kurt's official designation is "vermist", missing, according to the Dutch book "The 102,000 Names" that lists the fate of all Jewish victims of the Holocaust who lived in the Netherlands. It is presumed he was killed in Auschwitz in 1942, but I have found no document to prove that. I know Kurt was deeply loved by his mother (based on a letter I have). 

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