United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Susie Schwarz was born Suse Grünbaum in 1931 in Schlüchtern, Germany to Max Grünbaum and Kate Kahn. Her family moved to the Netherlands in 1933 to escape Nazi oppression and settled in Dinxperlo at the recommendation of the Pagrach family. They were restricted from conducting business and attending school after the German invasion in May 1940, and in April 1943 they went into hiding to avoid deportation. Max was hidden on the farm of Gerrit and Geertruida Jolink while Susie and Kate were hidden on the farm of Bernard and Mina Hartemink, first in a bedroom, then in an underground space, and finally in a loft over the barn. They were liberated by Canadian troops on April 1, 1945. Susie immigrated to the United States in 1947, and her parents joined her in 1950.
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The Susie Greenbaum Schwarz papers are arranged as a single series: I. Susie Greenbaum Schwarz papers, 1941-1946
The Susie Greenbaum Schwarz papers consist of a diary, false identification papers, and photographs documenting Susie Schwarz and her parents’ experiences in hiding on Christian farms in the Netherlands during the Holocaust as well as tracing correspondence documenting the deportations of Carolina Pagrach and her husband Mozes Levisson from Westerbork to Sobibor and their deaths. Susie wrote her diary in hiding in the form of a cookbook. In it, she complains of boredom and intersperses recipes with personal observations about her experience in hiding and news she hears about the war’s progression. The back of the diary includes a brief handwritten Dutch‐English dictionary. False identification papers include papers for Susie’s parents in the names of Gerrit Marinus van der Vegte, and Johanna van der Laar and two additional papers in the names of Bernhard Post and Bertha Pauwels used by members of the Pagrach family, a Dutch family who had persuaded the Grünbaum family to settle in Dinxperlo. Two photographs depict Susie and her mother in their hiding place in the Harteminks’ barn around the time of liberation. Tracing correspondence consists of letters from the Dutch Central Registration for Jews and the Dutch Red Cross tracing the Holocaust fates of Mozes Levisson and Carolina Pagrach Levisson explaining that they were deported from Westerbork to Sobibor and killed.
Susie Greenbaum Schwarz papers