Henry Joshua on Tuesday, February 2, 2021. Here is a small portion of his story.
Henry was born in 1934 in Hamburg, Germany. Pictures of his home aren’t available online, but he might have been born here: Stolperstein dedicated to Max Joshua.
The US Holocaust Museum has this picture of Henry as a child with his brother and sister, and here are his parents, Max and Elizabeth Joshua with their then-newborn son, Jacob.
In 1939, presumably to escape from the Nazis, his family went to live with his aunt (Elizabeth’s sister) in Switzerland, on visitors’ visas. Wanting to help, Elizabeth helped clean some of her sister’s windows. One of the domestic help saw and reported her to the Swiss authorities, who deported them back to Germany for working in violation of their visa.
They then moved to Holland (photo), and, after the Germans invaded, they moved to Utrecht (photo of Henry’s sister, Karin, in school in Utrecht – she’s wearing glasses on the right side of the photo). At some point in 1943, they were forced to move to the Asterdorp Ghetto, about which a documentary film was recently made.
Henry’s brother, Jacob, features prominently in the film and a photo of Henry was used in the movie posters (bottom right).
Below is a photo of the Jewish star that Henry’s mother, Elizabeth Joshua, was required to wear.
They were incredibly fortunate to obtain Paraguayan passports through the heroic efforts of a Mr. Julius Kuhl.
However, in late 1943, Max Joshua was found to have been traveling outside of the ghetto without wearing his star, and so he and his family were taken to the Westerbork transit camp.
The family was then transferred to Bergen Belsen in February of 1944. Being classified as foreign nationals, they were placed in a special section of the camp and received better treatment, including being able to receive letters and packages from abroad.
Max Joshua died of hunger on January 16, 1945. Here is a letter that he wrote in 1939 authorizing his family to immigrate to the US without him. A few days later, Henry and his family were transferred to the Biberach internment camp, which primarily housed British Citizens from Guernsey, in the then-occupied Channel Islands. Henry later had correspondence with some of the British internees at Biberach in which he thanked them for their assistance.
Here are some pictures from after Henry and his family were liberated from the Biberach camp.
Close-up portrait of Henry Joshua taken after his liberation from Biberach. – Collections Search
They moved to Vichy, France, where Henry celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. Henry is on the left, wearing knickers.
They came to the US in 1948. Henry obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from NYU and did postdoctoral work at Princeton University.
He worked for Merck, a pharmaceutical company, where he worked on numerous medications that have helped countless people. He holds numerous patents.
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