The Ahrend siblings were all born in Frankfurt am Main -- Bernhard in 1927, Miriam exactly one year later, and Benjamin in 1930. Their father, Siegmund, was a wholesaler from Miltenberg in Bavaria; their mother, Jenny (nee Falk), born in Schrimm, Posen. For most of their time in Frankfurt, the family residence was an apartment at Gwinnerstraße 22 (now Mousonstraße) in the city's Ostend neghborhood, though they had moved to Ostendstraße 63 by 1938.1.
In June 1938, Siegmund was arrested in the Arbeitsscheu Reich raids2 and sent to Buchenwald for two months;3 his death in September, less thans two weeks after he was released, was almost certainly a result of his mistreatment there.4 As the family no longer had a breadwinner, Jenny Ahrend entrusted her children to Frankfurt's Israelitische Waisenanstalt, the orphanage on Röderbergweg where her sister-in-law Elli Ahrend worked as head of the girls' section.5
After Kristallnacht, Isidor and Rosa Marx, the couple who ran the orphanage, scrambled to get the children in their care out of Germany. The Ahrend siblings were chosen for the first of the Kindertransports organized by the Marxes, arriving in the Netherlands with around 20 other children on November 22, 1938. In Amsterdam, the boys lived at the Nederlands-Israëlitisch Jongensweeshuis at Amstel 21,6 while Miriam was taken in by the Portugees-Israëlitisch Meisjesweeshuis on the Nieuwe Prinsengracht.7
Miriam Ahrend is mentioned in a memoir written by Jutta Levitus, a friend from the Frankfurt orphanage who was one of the few children from the November 22nd Kindertransport to survive the war. Jutta recalls that the two of them belonged to a small group of girls from the Waisenanstalt whom Meta Jawetz-Oppenheimer, also originally from Frankfurt, had taken under her wing and would often bring on excursions around Amsterdam.
The book also notes that Miriam attended the Palacheschool8 with Jutta and a few other refugee children. Her academic path after this isn't clear. Both Ahrend boys went to the NIJW's own school before enrolling in the Joodsche HBS: Bernhard in 1941, Benjamin the following year.9
While in Amsterdam, the Ahrends likely had contact with their first cousins from Cologne, Jettchen Cahn and Mirjam Pakter-Cahn -- born to Jenni Ahrend's sister, Rachel Cahn (nee Falk) -- who had fled Germany around the same time they did.10, 11
As part of a larger "emptying" operation targeting Jewish care organizations throughout the Netherlands in early 1943, the Nazis raided all four of Amsterdam's Jewish orphanages on February 10. Approximately 250 children and staff were arrested, brought to the train station near the Panamakade, then sent on to Westerbork.12 Bernhard, Benjamin and Miriam Ahrend spent nearly a month here before they were packed onto another train: the first transport from Westerbork to the Sobibor extermination camp. In 1949, they were declared legally dead; their official date of death was fixed at March 5, 1943 - the day they arrived at Sobibor.
Their mother also did not survive the war. Jenny Ahrend left Frankfurt for Karlsruhe in 1939, to live with her sister's family. A year later, in the fall of 1940, they were rounded up with thousands of other Jews in southwestern Germany and deported to France. She was imprisoned at Gurs until August 1942, when she was sent to Auschwitz via the Drancy transit camp, and is assumed to have been gassed on arrival.5
1. Frankfurt am Main address books, 1929-1939
2. Siegmund Ahrend's Buchenwald records. Interestingly, the Jüdischer Frontkämpferbund, a Jewish war veterans' group better known as the Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten, is noted in the "party membership" field, indicating possible veteran status.
3. Various Buchenwald files, ITS Arolsen
4. Death certificate for Siegmund Ahrend, ISG Frankfurt am Main
5. Entry on Jenny Ahrend, Gedenkbuch für die Karlsruher Juden
6. NIJW staff notebook, p. 124, Amsterdam municipal archives
7. PIMW resident list, Population Registry Special Registers, Amsterdam municipal archives
8. Jutta Rosen-Levitus, Jutta: te midden van vreemden, pp. 37, 60
9. Joodsche HBS student cards, Amsterdam municipal archives
10. Die Bahn erinnern, p.8, Hauptbahnhof Köln
11. Bernhard Ahrend's Joodsche Raad card notes correspondence in March 1943 -- likely concerning the Ahrend siblings' whereabouts -- between the Jewish Council and a Mrs Pakter at Plantage Kerklaan 35-II in Amsterdam. These were the married name and address of their cousin Mirjam Cahn.
12. Joodsche Raad minutes, Feb 11 1943, NIOD
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