Spoorstraat 123

The van Leeuwen family lived at this address. At the beginning of 1941, grandmother "Moetje" van Leeuwen celebrated her 100th birthday, which was celebrated with serenades, aubades, a gift from the neighborhood and a lot of visitors. She died in late 1941, before deportations started. Her son Simon went into hiding in Gennepse Heij in 1943. Grandson Arthur and his wife Ellen van Leeuwen-Hoffmann went into hiding in Berlin, where Ellen was betrayed after a few weeks. Arthur returned to Gennep after the war and remarried (his wife Ellen was murdered in Germany). The couple had a daughter, Anneke, born in May 1940, who was handed over to the resistance in hiding in Friesland.
When son Simon, daughter Jet and grandson Arthur with his wife Ellen and daughter Anneke received the call for deportation, it was only Jet who boarded the train in Gennep towards Vught and from there via Westerbork to Sobibor.
In 2019, pizzeria "La Bella" is located at this address.

** Jet van Leeuwen **
Jet therefore went along with the transport of April 9, 1943. Arthur, Ellen, Anneke and Simon went into hiding.

** Ellen van Leeuwen-Hoffmann **
Arthur and Ellen van Leeuwen, after their flight through family in Düsseldorf, ended up in Berlin with Ellen's sister Hannie at Tauenziehenstrasse 7. They presented themselves there as false Jews with false papers, but with their real names and even the address Spoorstraat 123 Gennep. Arthur reported to the Arbeitsamt in Berlin, because of course he had to have work. From April 29, 1943 he worked as an electrician at the company Warmte, a Dutch company with branches in Amsterdam and Kiew.

After Arthur left Berlin, there was regular letter contact between Arthur and Ellen. The last letter is from June 11, 1943. In Charkow Arthur heard that one Ellen Löwen-Hoffmann had been arrested by the Gestapo. Ellen and Hannie had been betrayed by a neighbor living above them on the Gestapo and were arrested on June 7, 1943. Hannie, who was considered a half-Jew, was imprisoned, then Ravensbrück, and survived. On June 17, 1943, Ellen was deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt.
She spent sixteen months in Theresienstadt. After two months she was threatened to be sent to Auschwitz. She opposed this by writing to the Jewish administration in Theresienstadt, which was responsible for drawing up the deportation lists: * "Ich ersuche Ausreihung aus dem Transporte. nicht eingereiht were soll "*. She signed with Ellen van Leeuwen. Apparently people in Theresienstadt did not know that she had married a Jew and had therefore lost her status as "mischling". And perhaps they did not know that in June when she was arrested in Berlin. In any case, with this note she managed to stay.
That worked for another year. How she got through that time is unknown. It was not easy in Theresienstadt, although officially it was not an extermination camp. However, the living conditions were very miserable and there was little to eat. In early September 1944, Lore Kann, the daughter of manufacturer Ernst Kann, arrived in Theresienstadt from Westerbork. Ellen and Lore were four years old and knew each other from Goch and later from Gennep.

From summer 1944, regular transports from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. It was also Ellen's turn on October 1944. That could not be stopped now. Lore Kann took her to the train. The transport consisted of 1500 people.
Of these, 157 women were admitted to the Durchgangslager upon arrival in Auschwitz, pending which labor camp they would be sent to. Ellen was part of that, although someone would later state that this was hard to imagine, she looked so bad. On October 29 she left with 1000 other women of different ages to Gross Rosen. Among them were several mothers with daughters.
They were given the numbers 79501-80500 there. Gross Rosen was located 200 kilometers west of Auschwitz, 50 kilometers above Breslau. In Gross Rosen it appeared that this group was intended for the Kurzbach (now Bukolowe) women's labor camp.
That camp was part of the Unternehmen Bartold, which built defense works with the help of forced laborers, prisoners of war, local people, young people and, from October 1944, concentration camp prisoners. The 1,000 Jewish women from Auschwitz were added to that. They were housed under very primitive conditions in two stables that belonged to an estate of the Fürst von Hatzfeld. A pigsty served as an infirmary. SS men and war-wounded soldiers guarded them. The Lagerführer was a reserve captain who, in the testimony of survivors, behaved humanly. But his deputy was a policeman who whipped the prisoners regularly, which he always carried with him. There were also some guards who treated the women badly, beat them and withheld food as punishment. The women did not wear stripe suits, but their clothes, which were much too thin, were marked with oil paint on the back to prevent flights. Their food was extremely sparse, it consisted of some soup, bread and coffee a day.
The work was very hard for most. It was directed by the Organization Todt, the paramilitary organ from which Arthur ended up at the NSKK. After a daily march of several kilometers, they had to cut down trees and excavate armored forces in groups of 100 women under the supervision of two guards. That happened at almost 20 degrees cold with primitive tools in the frozen soil. Many women died because of exhaustion, hunger, cold or mistreatment. It is not certain that Ellen had to work in these circumstances.
Some women were employed as clerks of the camp management or worked in dressmaking. They had better. There is a small chance that she has been part of that. Perhaps it helped that she spoke German from home.

When the Russians approached, the women had to return to Gross Rosen on foot.

That was a distance of 90 kilometers. When they arrived in Gross Rosen after days, in thin clothes and with hardly anything to eat, 200 women had died. And this also survived Ellen. The remaining ones spent two weeks in the crowded Gross Rosen. During that period, Werner Hertog also ended up there. But he only stayed in this hell for a few days. The women left in open cattle trucks for Bergen Belsen. She never got there. Had that happened, it is not certain whether she had survived there. Many of those who arrived there died of starvation and typhus. It is not known where and when she died on the way, nor where she left her body.

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