Holocaust survivor who died at 96 remembered

NORFOLK

Hanns Loewenbach was a survivor. Not only of the Holocaust, a horrific time in his past, but also of life.

The 96-year-old dared people to rob him of his independence and often drove himself to schools to talk about how hate killed families, including many members of his. His stories made him one of the area's most prominent speakers on the Holocaust.

He defied his aging body and continued to make appearances when others thought he needed to slow down.

Sometimes he defied logic, friends and family members said Wednesday during his funeral. Loewenbach, who died Monday, managed to find compassion and optimism even when the world seemed to lack those traits, they said.

That "was an incredible, incredible thing, considering what he'd seen," Rabbi Jeffrey Arnowitz told the crowd at Congregation Beth El.

Loewenbach did not want to revisit those painful years until he heard author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, a Romanian-born man who survived the Holocaust, talk about the importance of bearing witness. Later in his life, educating young people became Loewenbach's purpose, Arnowitz said.

"When he spoke, he seemed to grow taller and his voice stronger as he spoke on behalf of those who could not speak for themselves," Arnowitz said.

Arnowitz began Loewenbach's story as Loewenbach often began it - by saying that he had the bad luck of being born in Germany in 1915.

He endured anti-semitism from teachers and classmates. Then, in 1934, a year after Adolf Hitler became Germany's chancellor, Loewenbach's father was taken away for refusing to sign away his business rights to his non-Jewish partners. He was put on a work detail that eventually built the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The days became darker for Jews, and Loewenbach would say, "I felt like a deer, and it was deer season."

He once fled Germany by swimming to Denmark, where he found "10 minutes of freedom," Arnowitz said. But a Danish officer caught him and gave him the option of being turned over to the Germans or swimming back. Loewenbach swam back. He hid, and was resting on a park bench marked "No Jews" one day when a German officer walked up to him. It was a former classmate. The old friend helped him escape.

Loewenbach escaped to Italy and then helped get his mother and father out of Germany. The family settled in China with other Jewish refugees and stitched together a life. Loewenbach eventually married another Holocaust survivor, and the two moved to the United States, had a daughter and began another life. His wife died soon afterward and Loewenbach later remarried, had two more children, and eventually retired to Hampton Roads. In recent years, he joined the speakers' bureau of the Holocaust Commission of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater.

Betsy Karotkin, who works with the commission, was one of several who spoke about how Loewenbach changed her life. Karotkin said he might've sensed how difficult it would be for her to deal with his passing. In recent years, he'd say, "Remember, Betsy, we are only visitors here."

"Yes, your visit is over, Hanns," Karotkin said. "but your life and its lessons will continue through your beautiful grandchildren, in the thousands of young people whose lives you have touched.... I thank God for the gift of your life."