To day in memory of the 80th anniversary of VE day, I think about my family, the ones from Germany who suffered the persecution of the Jews. Today in my thoughts are my aunt – Lisamaria, my father’s sister. I never knew her, but wish I had. I do have a photograph of her.
I am happy that I did know, though briefly, my grandparents Dr Emil Meirowsky and his wife Clara.
I found this- written about Lisamaria on the internet.
“To date, there is not even a photograph of her. Her father was the well-known university professor Dr. Emil Meirowsky, who had a name as a dermatologist in Cologne and was chairman of the Cologne Medical Association until the Jews were removed from all high offices by the National Socialist rulers. The gifted daughter received solid conversion lessons during her last class of high school, while the Bonn theology professor Wilhelm Neuß was to give her the sacrament of baptism.
She completed her studies of medicine, which took her to Rome for some time, with a doctorate in medicine. Her long-cherished desire to become a doctor came true.
Like many baptised Jews, Lisamaria Meirowsky fled to the Netherlands in the autumn of 1938; at the same time, she became active in the aid organization for Jewish refugees. When the war reached the Netherlands in 1940, she hid in the Trappist const of Berkel-Enschot in Brabant, where she served modestly as a doorman. On the 2nd In August 1942, she was kidnapped by the Gestapo. She wrote to her confessor: “I want to send you one last greeting and tell you that I am full of confidence and completely devoted to God’s holy will. Yes, even more, I see it as a grace and a choice to have to leave under these circumstances, in order to stand up for the word of our fathers and shepherds in Christ.” On the following 9. In August she was gassed with other Jewish prisoners, among them the Stein siblings, in the Auschwitz concentration camp. “
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