Extraordinary Jewish Converts Arrested and Sent to Auschwitz

Editor: This is actually part of a series in its last part.

"For the Novitiate of Koningshoeven!“

Trappist in Cloister Koningshoeven

During their deportation to Auschwitz six Loeb-Sisters met Edith Stein as well.  by Anscar Christensen


(kreuz.net) After the Pastoral Protest Letter of the Dutch Bishops against National Socialism in 1942 all Catholics of Jewish descent were arrested in the Netherlands.

Among them they found three sons and three siblings of the Jewish Loeb family. They lived as Trappists in two Dutch Cloisters.

The time of their captivity found the Loebs in a brilliant society: Doctors, Intellectuals, educated Dominicans and a great Carmelite, Sister Benedicta a Cruce Edith Stein.

Because of her strong character, Sister Benedicta was the natural leader of the group of deported Jewish religious. The Holy Office and the Rosary was prayed in common.

Witnesses reported that both Loeb priests comforted them and heard their confessions. The Sisters were brave and helpful -- especially to the children.

We don't know anything more than this. The group was sent to the fearful Camp of Auschwitz in Poland. A National Socialist document soberly reported their birth and day of death: August and September 1942.

It was and unconfirmed report from an anonymous letter after that Fathers Ignatius and Nivardus Loeb together with two Polish and two Greek priests were shot, because they had heard confessions.

Father Nivardus, the former assitant of the novice master, called, before the bullets of the firing squad hit him: "For the Novitiate in Koningshoeven!

Sister Veronika Loeb, who contracted a serious case of tuberculosis during their incarceration, was later sent by the SS to the infamous Concentration Camp Westerbork.

Actually after only eight or ten days they let her free again. Her superior sent her thereafter to various hospitals. Finally she died on August 1944 in the Cloister.

The youngest Loeb-brother, Hans, who had not entered into the Cloister, was in any case arrested and was forced to work in a Polish zinc mine.

As the Soviet Troops neared, he was put on an open truck wagon and transported west. He suffered severe frostbite on his feet and died in February 1945 in an infirmary in Auschwitz.

Paula -- the youngest child of family Loeb -- married in Holland. During the war she was hidden in the house of a courageous Catholic in Nijmagen.

She is the only living member of the extraordinary family Loeb.

Link to original...