(1/9) Elfriede Ingenkamp was born 01-10-1927 in Dinslaken Germany. She was the daughter of Klara Gradus, born 1906 and Fritz Ingenkamp, who was not Jewish. On 23-02-1929 her brother Karl Heinz was born. In 1936 the parents got divorced.
(2/9) Elfriede lived for a while with her grandparents, but after the kristallnacht she went with a children's transport to the Netherlands. Her brother moved to cologne and lived in a Jewish children's home. He lived there from 1937 to July 1942.
(3/9) On 20-07-1942 all children of this children's home were deported to Minsk and killed on arrival.😢
Their mother Klara fled to the Uk in 1938.
Elfriede lived on different addresses in the Netherlands. In May 1940 she moved to the Jewish orphanage in Rotterdam.
(4/9) In 1942 a Mister Uiterweer wrote a letter saying he was Elfriede's guardian and that she was not Jewish and should not have been made a member of the Jewish community. Apparently this request was approved and she was released.
It's unclear (to me) if this man was related.
(5/9) Elfriede was released only days before the orphanage was cleared and everyone was send to Westerbork. She then moved to Amersfoort and lived there till 1945.
On 05-05-1945 the German forces capitulated in the Netherlands and the Netherlands was a free country again.
(6/9) Since then the 5th of May is called "bevrijdingsdag" or "Liberation day".
But on this festive day, while the people in the Netherlands were celebrating their freedom, Elfriede was killed by a stray bullet.😢
(7/9) There are 2 versions of her death. In one she was looking out of the attic window, where she had been hiding because there was fighting on the street, when a bullet hit her.
The 2nd version is that she was on the street in Amersfoort and got killed by a stray bullet.
(8/9) In 2010 in a newspaper article information was requested about where in Amersfoort she lived and how she got killed. But nobody has come forward.
Until now it's unclear where she lived and how she died.
On her tombstone 'here lies Elfriede Ingenkamp died while in hiding'
(9/9) After the war her mother requested information about Elfriede as she had not heard of her in over 5 years.
But later this was followed by a 2nd writing where she says no more help is needed because she found out her daughter died.😢
Elfriede & Karl-Heinz😢💔🕯️✡️
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