Lea Levie was a daughter of Tanchum Levie from Groningen and Hanna Ricardo Rocamora from Hamburg and was born in Hamburg on 6 October 1886. She was a domestic teacher by profession and had obtained her diplomas for it. She lived with her parents and brothers Jon, Iwan and Abraham and sister Sarah at home in Hamburg but came to the Netherlands from Germany in 1939, which her brothers and sister had already done earlier. Lea Levie was unmarried.
Lea arrived in Amsterdam on 26 April 1939 and initially lived on the 1st floor of the Zocherstraat 11, then from 24 August 1949 with her brother Iwan in the Valkenburgerstraat 8 1st floor, but only stayed there only for a month. She then moved to the Biesboschstraat, the Scheldestraat and her last known address was Westerscheldeplein 11 1st floor, where she was registered on 14 June 1940.
In 1941, all Jews in the Netherlands were mandatory registered with the Jewish Council. The competent impression she made and her background in education plus as a social worker made her “gesperrt because of function” (exempted from deportation until further notice) by the Jewish Council: she became a teacher and seamstress at a sewing workshop at possibly "House Oosteinde" at Oosteinde 24 in Amstrdam, a department of the Jewish Council, where courses in sewing and alterations were given.
Lea was able to perform that function for the Jewish Council until the end of 1943, but after numerous raids and mass deportations, the Jewish Council was also dissolved at the end of September 1943 and Amsterdam was declared “Judenrein”. On 13 October 1943, Lea Levie was arrested and taken to Westerbork and on 14 October she was housed there in barrack 65.
On 19 October 1943, Lea Levie was deported to Auschwitz. It is known that this transport had already left Camp Vught on 18 October and that the number of deportees amounted to 1007, of whom the majority of the men who were selected for work upon arrival, were put to work in Warsaw for rubble-clearing work after 4 weeks of "quarantine", and a smaller part was sent to the coal mines in Jawischowitz, while nothing more was heard about the women after the arrival of the transport in Auschwitz. (see publication Auschwitz IV by the Red Cross, October 1953).
That was also the fate of 57-year-old Lea Levie: after arriving in Auschwitz, she was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau with all the other women, children under 16, as well as men over 50, the sick and others unfit for work, on 22 October 1943.
Sources include the Amsterdam City Archives, archive card of Lea Levie; housing cards Amsterdam/Zocherstraat 11 and Valkenburgerstraat 8; the archive of the Red Cross, transport list Amsterdam->Westerbork of 13 October 1943 with Lea Levie; the archive of the Jewish Council, registration card of Lea Levie; the Archive of the Red Cross, publication "Auschwitz IV" from October 1953/transport 19 October 1943 Westerbork-Auschwitz and the death certificate no. 426 for Lea Levie, drawn up in Amsterdam on 21 September 1951 from the A-register86-folio 72verso,