Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Sophia de Levie was born May 17, 1919, in Shakopee, Minnesota.

Sophia’s father was Samuel Benjamin de Levie (1879-1943), and her mother was Frouwkje Frieda Simons de Levie (1883-1957).

Sophia’s grandfather was Nochum de Levie (1841-1891); her great-grandfather was Benjamin Nochums de Levie (1810-1889); Sophia’s great-great-grandfather was Nochem Benjamin de Levie (1780-1836); her great-great-great-grandfather was Benjamin Heiman de Levie (1744-1828); and Sophia’s great-great-great-great-grandfather was Heiman Meyer Heinemann de Levie (1703-1782).

Sophia’s parents lived in Oude Pekela, Pekela Municipality, Gröningen, Netherlands. Gröningen is the northeasternmost province of the Netherlands. It borders Friesland to the west, Drenthe to the south, the German state of Lower Saxony to the east, and the Wadden Sea to the north. It was a farming area.

After Samuel and Frieda married on March 2, 1904 in Sappemeer, Hoogezand-Sappemeer, Groningen, Netherlands, they moved to Oude Pekela, where their first two girls, Ettie, or Stella, and Helena Lena de Levie were born. Then their first son, Nathan, was born May 21, 1909, but died Dec. 30, 1909.

Two years later, Samuel and Frieda, along with Stella and Lena, moved to America.

The family moved to Marion Township, in Linn County, Iowa. The U.S. Census said that the area was agricultural, just like the area in Gröningen, with about 725 people there. During the time in Iowa, Samuel and Frieda had two more children, Mary, who was born Dec. 1, 1913, and David, who was born Oct. 27, 1915.

Not long after, the family moved to Shakopee, Minnesota. And on May 17, 1919, Sophia was born. The U.S. Census for Shakopee in 1920, which had 1,988 people, lists the family, including Benjamin, Sophia’s father, who was 40 years old and a livestock broker; Frieda, his wife, who was 37 years old; Stella, who was 13; Lena, who was 11 years old, and both born in the Netherlands; Mary, age six, who was born in Iowa; and David, age three, who also was born in Iowa. And finally, the U.S. Census noted Sophia de Levie, who was eight months old, who was born in Shakopee. The family was Jewish.

About a year later, the family moved back to the Netherlands. Maybe the family missed the relatives who lived there. Or maybe they found that the United States was not that welcoming to them. Or it could be for many other reasons. But it was clear that on May 11, 1921, a son, Simon de Levie, was born in Hoogeveen, Hoogeveen, Drenthe, Netherlands.

The family lived in the Netherlands without many problems until Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), an Austrian-born German politician, rose to power as leader of the Nazi Party, where he became the Führer in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland in 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims. The Netherlands entered World War II on May 10, 1940, when invading German forces quickly overran the country.

After the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, it became a transit camp for Jews who were being deported to the Nazi concentration camps in middle and eastern Europe, and later to extermination camps.

The Holocaust in the Netherlands was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in the German-occupied Netherlands. In 1939, there were some 140,000 Dutch Jews living in the Netherlands, among them some 24,000 to 25,000 German-Jewish refugees who had fled from Germany in the 1930s. Some 75 percent of the Dutch Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust, according to Wikipedia.

Deportations of Jews from the Netherlands to German-occupied Poland and Germany began on June 15, 1942, and ended on Sept. 13, 1944. Ultimately, some 101,000 Jews were deported in 98 transports from Westerbork to Auschwitz (57,800; 65 transports), Sobibor (34,313; 19 transports), Bergen-Belsen (3,724; eight transports) and Theresienstadt (4,466; six transports), where most of them were murdered, according to Holocaust Encyclopedia.

Johann Baptist Albin Rauter (1895-1949) was a high-ranking Austrian-born SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads) functionary and war criminal during the Nazi era, according to Wikipedia. He was the highest SS and police leader in the occupied Netherlands and therefore the leading security and police officer there during the period of 1940-1945.

Rauter sent progress letters to Himmler informing him that “in all of Holland some 120,000 Jews are being readied for departure.” These “departures” that Rauter spoke of were the deportations of Dutch Jews to concentration and extermination camps.

The de Levie family, like most Jewish people in the Netherlands, were forced into concentration and extermination camps in Poland, including the Jewish girl who was born in Shakopee.

Simon, Sophia’s youngest brother, died Sept. 30, 1942, at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Sophia died Jan. 21, 1943, at age 23 years old. She died at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Oświęcim, Powiat oświęcimski, Małopolskie, Poland. On the same day, her older brother, David, died at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Sophia’s father died at the Sobibór Concentration Camp on May 28, 1943 in Sobibór, Lubelskie, Poland. Sophia’s sister, Helena Lena, died June 4, 1943, at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and another sister, Ettie, or Stella, died there June 4, 1943. And the final sister, Mary, who was born in Iowa, died Jan. 28, 1944, also at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

And so, Samuel Benjamin de Levie, and his six children all died in the Holocaust, including the one child who was born in Shakopee, Minnesota, Sophia de Levie.