Introduction
Gerda Margarethe was the eldest daughter of the five children of
Ernst Laqueur and Margarethe Laqueur-Loewenthal. Her diaries reveal a
highly observant girl, serious and considerate of her environment but
hard on herself. When, she was twelve, her parents, brothers and sister
moved to Amsterdam, but she remained with her maternal grandparents in
Brieg, Germany (after 1919 Brzeg, Poland) to finish secondary school.
Finishing her exams at the age of sixteen, she came to the Netherlands,
learned Dutch, and, for the first time, attended a co-ed vocational
school the Handelsschool on the Raamgracht in Amsterdam. This was no
mean feat for a shy and insecure girl. After the Handelsschool she
studied German at the University of Groningen.
Gerda’s diaries reveal that she was extremely fond of her father. In
contrast, her mother was very critical of her. She met her future
husband, Felix Oestreicher, in 1929 when he was doing research at her
father’s internationally renowned laboratory in Amsterdam. They married
in Amsterdam at the end of 1930 and moved into his family home in
Carlsbad (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic). The eight years she spent
there, during which her three daughters were born, were extremely
happy.
In April 1938 the entire family fled to Amsterdam. Their attempts to
immigrate to the United States or South Africa were unsuccessful. After
the German invasion and occupation they had to move several times
before finally being forced to live in Amsterdam by the occupying
forces. The family was arrested there on November 1,1943 and interned
in Westerbork transit camp before being transported to Bergen Belsen.
Because I was declared ill, I was separated from my family and placed
in a Jewish hospital in Amsterdam.
My strongest memory of my mother is of her voice when she sang German
songs to us as we lay in bed. Afterwards my picture of her was coloured
by reading her childhood diaries, edited and published by my twin
sister, Maria Goudsblom-Oestreicher. They reveal that, as a schoolgirl,
she had a talent for drawing and was extremely interested in paintings.
Her diaries contain extensive descriptions of her visits to museums in
Berlin, Breslau and Amsterdam and notations about theatre, music and
literature. Her life in the concentration-camps is described in her
husband’s diaries. He writes of her unhappiness but also of the care
she took of him and her children.
Liberated by the Russians in Tröbitz from a train from Bergen Belsen to
an unknown destination, she was able to sleep between clean sheets for
a short time. From the curtains in the farm where she was stationed she
made kerchiefs and three dresses for her girls. Soon after she
contracted typhiod fever and died at the end of May 1945. When my
sisters and I visited Tröbitz in 1990 it was with surprise and joy that
we discovered that she and my father have their own graves.
Biography of Gerda Oestreicher-Laqueur 1906-1945
| 1906 |
born in Heidelberg |
| 1918 |
family moves to Amsterdam, lives with her grandparents |
| 1922 |
moves to Amsterdam, attends a the vocational school |
| 1924 |
studies German in Groningen |
| 1929 |
meets Felix Oestreicher |
| 1930 |
marries Felix Oestreicher |
| 1931-1938 |
lives in Carlsbad (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) |
| 1934 |
birth of daughter Anna Beate |
| 1936 |
birth of twins Maria and Henriette (Helli) |
| 1938 |
flees to the Netherlands with husband, children and mother-in-law |
| 1938-1943 |
lives in Leiden, Katwijk, Blaricum and Amsterdam |
| 1940 |
German occupation of the Netherlands |
| 1943 |
arrested and interned in Westerbork transit camp |
| 1944 |
transported with family to Bergen Belsen concentration camp |
| 1945 |
liberated in Tröbitz |
| 1945 |
dies from typhiod fever in Tröbitz on May 31 |