Introduction
Felix Hermann Oestreicher was born in Carlsbad (now Karlovy Vary,
Czech Republic), a spa resort in Bohemia known for its curative waters.
He was the eldest of four children of Karl Oestreicher, district
physician, and Clara Oestreicher-Kisch. Felix followed in his father’s
footsteps and studied medicine. His studies were interrupted by the
First World War but he passed his medical exams in 1918, becoming a
doctor of internal medicine and setting up his practice in his parents
home. During the winter months, when there were few patients in
Carlsbad, he did medical research in laboratories in Vienna, Munich,
Berlin and Amsterdam. It was in the latter city that he met Gerda
Laqueur. They married in Amsterdam at the end of 1930 and settle d in
Carlsbad, where their three daughters were born: Beate in 1934, and
Maria and Henriette (Helli) in 1936.
By April 1938 the threat of invasion by Nazi Germany led the entire
family to flee to Amsterdam. They were captured there, nonetheless.
Together with my grandmother, my mother and my two sisters, Felix was
taken to the concentration-camps by the Germans in 1943. Since my
father had declared I had diptheria, I was separated from them and left
in a local hospital in Amsterdam.
Since Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend school in the
Netherlands from 1941 on, my father taught us – ‘his triplets’ – at
home. And he was forbidden to practice medicine even though he had
passed his Dutch medical exams in 1940. In his so-called
‘Drillingsberichte’ (Triplets Report) he described the progress in the
lessons and the daily squabbles of his three daughters from week to
week. His devotion and dedication was impressive and touching. Beate,
the eldest, was apparently the best behaved of the three. We twins were
very different and often restless. Thanks to his patience, we learned
the necessity of and, more importantly, the pleasure in education. That
was an achievement in itself when I consider that in those daily
lessons his thoughts must have been filled with worries about the
future. He was a considerate and careful man, loving towards his family
and relatives.
He was not religious but Jewish tradition and culture was meaningful to
him, so that for a while we were instructed in Hebrew. The biblical
stories and Greek and Roman myths he related to us were illustrated
with reproductions of Renaissance paintings. We also learned about
Teutonic mythology.
He taught us to think of others, to share with our sisters and to be
obedient and respectful. He had travelled a great deal, particularly in
the winter months when his medical practice in Carlsbad was quiet, with
the result that he spoke many languages. Unfortunately I can no longer
recall what his Dutch was like.
He loved to cycle with my mother, until that was forbidden. Together
they survived the hardships and indignities of two concentration camps
and a hellish fourteen-day train ride through an entirely devastated
Germany. Together they experienced their liberation at the hands of the
Russians. When it seemed they had survived everything, they were struck
down by typhoid fever. The two girls Beate and Maria returned alone to
Holland bringing their father’s concentration-camp diary with them. In
this diary he expressed how lost and humiliated he felt and the
disloyalty he sometimes had to suffer from his Dutch fellow doctors.
There is despair in his words, but remarkably enough, nowhere does he
express the fear that he would not survive. His poems in the diary
reveal a sensitive yet unsentimental man who observes his surroundings,
reflects on the past, the present and what was to come and is concerned
about the survivors who must bear the burden of the memory of the
horrors of the camps.
My twin sister Maria Goudsblom-Oestreiche, together with Anneliese
Nassuth-Broschmann deciphered and edited his camp diary and it
published in 2000 as Ein Jüdischer Arzt-Kalender. She contributed an
expressive introduction and commentary.
Biography of Felix Oestreicher 1894-1945
| 1894 |
born in Carlsbad (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic) |
| 1918 |
graduates in internal medicine |
| 1919-1935 |
research in laboratories in Vienna, Munich, Berlin and Amsterdam |
| 1930 |
marries Gerda Laqueur in Amsterdam |
| 1934 |
birth of daughter Beate |
| 1936 |
birth of twin daughters Maria and Henriette (Helli) |
| 1938 |
flees to Amsterdam with mother, wife and children |
| 1940 |
passes Dutch medical examinations |
| 1943 |
arrested with his entire family and interned in Westerbork transit camp |
| 1944 |
transported with his family to Bergen Belsen concentration-camp |
| 1945 |
liberated in Tröbitz by the Soviet army |
| 1945 |
dies in Tröbitz on 9 June |