Erich Daniel Sommer, born 03.05.1900 in Finnentrop, died on 25.10.1979 in Mercer Island, Washington. Daniel reached the proverbial saving shore, the east coast of "America", on August 3, 1940, coming from Yokohama, Japan on the ship Hikawa Maru.
Daniel Sommer was Jewish and he probably used the last escape route for Jews from Germany in 1938. This route went from Genoa in Italy to Shanghai, China, as the city was the only place of refuge, apart from the Comoros, that accepted Jewish refugees.
Henny and Ilse Jacob from Lenhausen were the only members of the Jacob family to survive the Holocaust, together with their brother Werner. Henny married the Jew Paul Vogelsang in Dortmund. Henny emigrated to Belgium in 1937. On March 10, 1940, when the German Wehrmacht invaded Belgium and Holland, they fled to the south of France. They were interned there. Paul Vogelsang was extradited by the Vichy government in March 1943. Henny was not, because she was pregnant. Her husband died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Henny Jacob-Vogelsang emigrated to the USA with her daughter in 1947.
Ilse fled to England in 1939. Her attempt, together with her sister Henny, to ransom her brother Erich from the concentration camp for 1000 British pounds failed. The money was sent to the camp administration in Buchenwald, but Erich Jacob was still not released. After the Second World War, she first moved to Luxembourg and married there. In 1954, like her sister Henny, she emigrated to the USA with her husband and daughter. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)