On Dec 8, 1920 in Bielefeld, Germany, a baby girl was born to Herta and Carl Philipp. She was named Leisalotte Lore.
The young girl was the darling of her parents and among the extended family. There were many happy visits to her maternal grandparents home where young Lore, as she was nicknamed, would sit beside her Opa (grandfather) as he worked in his watchmaking shop. He was a very progressive man for his day, and had insisted that his two daughters (Lore's mother and her sister) receive a good education. The importance of which, was also instilled in the child. Young Lore attended private schools and there was much emphasis on attendance, punctuality, and performance. The German that was spoken in the home was "proper" German and children were expected to behave.
Her Mother was a seamstress and stitched all of her daughter's clothes. Her mother was attentive to teach her daughter the skill, starting at a very young age. The little girl, wearing a homemade dress that probably buttoned up the front (her mother was fond of 'button up the front'), and thick stockings with high button shoes, would sit beside her mother for sewing lessons as her mother hand stitched or used a treadle sewing machine. Easy tasks. Using a large blunt needle threaded with yarn, the child's small fingers guided the needle in and out of prepunched holes on a piece of cardboard. From such simple projects, she graduated to making doll clothes, samplers, and eventually her own clothes. But it was the sewing machine that the child had her eye on all along. Lore recalls, she felt it beneath her to have to start out with hand stitchery. As Lore got older, she recalls wanting store bought clothes instead of 'homemade' ones.
Her mother also taught her to swim, Lore remembers holding tight to her mother's two fingers in the water.
Then, the little girl's happy childhood was shattered by the untimely death of her father. Lore remembers her father being a good provider, they lived a good life and wanted for nothing. But now, with the death of her father, everything was changed and so did the household financial situation. Expenses now had to be watched closely.
At the insistence of family, her mother remarried some time after, and by the time Lore was 8-9 years old, they had relocated to Heidelberg. Her new stepfather already had two children, a boy and a girl and the two families were blended together. Lore was now the 'middle' child, with a sister a few years older that herself. She never took on the new family name of Goldstrom when her mother remarried. At her insistence, certain of what she wanted even at such a young age, the judge granted that Lore could retain her father's last name of Philipp.
By 1936, at about the age of 15, Lore had moved on to the safety of England from Heidelberg.
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Bielefeld (see picture- circa 1920) was a linen producing town and was one of several that printed very attractive and highly collectable bank notes (pictured) with embroidered designs on silk, velvet, and linen. They were issued by the town's savings bank and sent all around the world.
The town's only synagogue (pictured) was burned in 1938 on Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), also referred to as the 'Night of Broken Glass.' On this night of November 9-10 in 1938, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews by Nazi paramilitary and civilians took place all over Nazi Germany and parts of Austria as well. Using sledgehammers, the attackers ransacked, burned, and destroyed Jewish owned stores, buildings, synagogues, homes, hospitals, and schools that left the streets covered with broken glass. Over 1,000 synagogues were burned, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. Almost 100 Jews were killed and over 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.
The pretext for the attacks was retaliation for the assassination in Paris of German diplomat Ernst Von Rath by a German-born Polish Jew. Krisstallnacht is viewed by historians as the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocoust.
Beilefeld, important for its metalworks, textile industry, and railway was bombed by the RAF-Britan's Royal Air Force during WWII.
Many years later, as an adult, Lore would visit her home town to seek out memories of the place were she spent the early years of her childhood. Little remained... but she was able to identify the plot of land where the building had stood, in which the family had rented a flat.
Happy Valentine's Day
