Red Cross Letter

Red Cross letter sent from Maria, Max, and Karin to Henry in England. Likely, the last communication between Henry and his family, this letter was intended as a birthday greeting and sent many months prior to his birthday in hopes it would arrive in time.

As soon as the Allied military began to liberate Germany’s concentration camps, the world learned the extent of the Nazis’ wartime atrocities. International aid organizations and concerned individuals on the ground moved to assist the victims of Germany’s crimes against humanity and reunite separated families. All of Germany began the long process of rebuilding. The Loewensteins were officially recognized as Victims of the Nuremburg Laws.

The Loewensteins had only had three communications in the last five years with Henry in England. Neither he nor his family knew of each others’ fate. Six weeks after the end of the war Maria learned that a British delegation had arrived in Berlin. She set out on foot across the city’s ruins to see if she could find someone who could get word to her son in England. At British headquarters a soldier was standing guard in front of the building. Maria spoke very little English so he directed her to go up the stairs to a room where a British officer sat behind a desk. He spoke fairly fluent German. Maria asked him how she could make contact with her son in England from whom she had not heard in years. He asked her for her son's name and address. She told him: "Henry Loewenstein in Whipsnade, Bedfordshire."

He asked her to repeat what she had said, to be sure he had heard it right. He then got up, walked around the desk and told her that he had seen Henry just the previous week and that Henry looked well and happy. Major Blythe, Henry’s neighbor in Whipsnade, was probably the only person in the entire British Army who knew Henry at that moment. It was indeed miraculous that Maria had met him on her first try amidst all the millions of people who had been shuffled around and displaced by the war.