Testimony 2 - Ursula Levy - Justin Middleton

Ursula Levy was born in Ascheberg Germany in May of 1935. She had one older brother named George Levy who was six years older than she was. Her father and uncle died at the beginning of the war due to gangrene and other illnesses in 1939. She has very few memories of her mother, but those that she has are treasures. She mentions that her mother was always singing songs to her and it made her feel loved. After Krystallnact, Ursula’s mother feared for her children so she sent them to a contact in Holland where she knew they were hiding Jewish children. Ursula and George stayed in a catholic convent there from April 1939 until April 1943. They were fed and educated well there. According to Ursula it was an ideal situation. Of all the children in the convent only five of them were Jewish. Of those five Ursula and her brother George were the only two that survived the concentration camps. In 1943 Ursula and her brother were sent to a concentration camp. The conditions were awful, and she was separated from her brother which made her miserable. After spending some time there she was called to the commandante’s office where Mr. VanMacklinberg the Dutchman who helped hide her in the convent was there. He had made an arrangement with the commandante so he could get into the concentration camp to see her and her brother. He put the question in the commandante’s mind that her skin was too fair and her eyes were blue that they were not completely Jewish. This was one of the main factors that kept them from going to one of the death camps. They transferred to two other camps before liberation in the spring of 1945. The thing that kept them alive was their will to live, and a friend in Mr. VanMacklinberg who put a doubt in a Nazi’s mind to keep them out of the death camps. Ms. Levy’s consequences for surviving are good that she can inform the world about the conditions of what a Jew had to go through during the Holocaust. She also has very vivid memories of the terrible things that happened throughout Europe during this time period.

“Every day I saw wagons piled with corpses.”
“We always thought about getting out, it helped us to survive.”