“Things have no value. Lives have value,” advised Inge Jaffe Lowenstein. She was born Ingeborg Jaffe in 1925, and soon after, her family’s lives were at risk. Inge and her younger brother Henry lived with their parents in a small town near the Belgium-Netherlands border, a town with a convent and a synagogue. Her father was a WWI combat veteran and a textile engineer and sales representative. In 1937, Mr. Jaffe’s sister emigrated to Peru, and little Henry went to Belgium, thought to be safer. On Kristallnacht 1938 her parents were arrested but veteran Jaffe’s patriotic scars led to their release. One uncle disappeared forever that night; and one went into hiding in the Netherlands. Inge’s father decided to contact his sister in Peru, and paid an American consul in Paris for expensive tourist visas. They would go where their lives were more valued.
The Jaffe family first went to the harbor city of Hamburg in 1939 with their visas; but the suspicious visas were denied. France would honor them, so the family then went to Cherbourg and shipped to Peru, meeting Henry onboard. The family lived in Lima, learning Spanish. Father again sold textiles, and there was little antisemitism. In 1944 Inge graduated from the American school, where she had studied English, and began secretarial courses. Invited by her maternal uncle and aunt, Inge moved to the USA in 1946 when she was 21. She married in New York City in 1953, and the Loewenstein couple moved to Nashville. Inge made several visits with relatives to her German hometown in the 1980s.
