Lothar story with Laureen Nussbaum

I had the good fortune to visit Laureen Nussbaum today.  She's the local author who was featured in last Sunday's paper with her new book about German Jews in occupied in Amsterdam.  I wrote her asking about Lothar Baumann.  She said that she had received 8 notes from the article and was thrilled to get a note about somebody she knew.  There were thousands of German Jewish refugees in Amsterdam at that time.  But she did know Lothar Baumann and had a story about him.

The upper picture was her sixth grade class in Amsterdam in 1939.  This was a special school for the German Jewish refugees; one of the main objectives was to teach Dutch from a workbook.  With the irony that most of these children would never grow up to use their Dutch.  Lothar is the tall looking kid on the lower right.  Laureen herself is by the upper arrow holding the ball.  She said she had been in school with Lothar both in Mannheim and in Amsterdam so he was kind of an anchor to her.  In the 3rd grade, they were both learning Dutch from the workbook and doing quite well.  For the next year, the principal, trying to ensure that they would do well in the 4th grade, assigned Laureen back to the third grade and Lothar to the 4th grade.  Laureen was incensed, she did not want to stay back.  Her parents were not interested and told her she was on her own.  She went to the principal and insisted that since Lothar was the same age and she was doing as well as he was, she should be able to progress to the 4th grade.  She won her case!

When they got to high school, he went to a different school and she lost track of him.  Her family was close to the Frank family but she said that Lothar's family was not in the same circle though they lived nearby.  She didn't know anything about his parents.

She was reclassified as 'not a Jew' and 'shed' her star.  Lothar was not so fortunate and was identified in the first raid done by letter or phone call.  The same one targeting Margot Frank.  Laureen agreed with my dates.  Lothar hit Westerbork (the transit camp) on 10 July 1942 and died in Auschwitz in September 1942.

But Laureen welcome us to her apartment and served us tea and cookies.  She is nimble, smart and in great shape.  She lives right around the corner from Seattle Pops.  She was quite interested and we walked down for a visit.

Lothar would be my mother's second cousin.