I am the granddaughter of Mr Jozeph van Cleef and I would like to share with you the story of my grandfather – whom I never knew – and of his wife Agnès van Cleef-Smekens and their daughter, my mothers, Colette van Cleef-Keymeulen.

I am making my donation in memory of a friend and neighbour girl, Helena Spreekmeester. She lived with her parents – very loving people – and older brother in the Rivierenbuurt district of Amsterdam, at Waalstraat 180 III.

I read in the newspaper about your proposal to erect a 'Holocaust Names Memorial' in Wertheim Park in Amsterdam, and I must say I think it’s a good plan! That’s why I immediately adopted a name, Sara Arpels, born in Amsterdam on 29 April 1892, murdered in Sobibor on 2 July 1943. She was married to Isaäc Polak (died in Amsterdam on 10 May 1941); I don’t know what exactly she died of, only the date of death is known, but murdered seems a fitting word for what happened to her.

These are my grandparents on my mother’s side. Until I was 17 I never knew or suspected that there even was a Jewish side. Around the time of the commemoration of the dead in 1961, my mother suddenly said “I’m also Jewish”.

My four grandparents were murdered, along with many other family members, on both my father’s and mother’s side.

Not having a grandfather or grandmother has always been a big loss to me.

I hope that very soon I can be the grandmother that I dearly wanted to have.

Tamara Samann

I have adopted the names of my granddad Hartog Sacksioni and grandma Mathilda (nicknamed Tilly) Sacksioni-Perel. I never met either my granddad or grandma. I would love to have known them, and I would love to have been spoilt by them too.

I would very much like to adopt Alida Kropveld (1935), my mother’s younger sister. The big tragedy for my granddad and grandma was that their young daughter Alida was betrayed for a few guilders by the son of the butcher from her hiding place in Honselerdijk. She was picked up on Queen’s Day and transported to Westerbork. My grandparents travelled after her, but to no avail.

When I read the letter of recommendation for the Holocaust Names Memorial, my eye was caught by the fourth photo, in which Peter Zwaga holds a photo of Meijer Groenteman with his wife and children. During the war Elisabeth Groenteman went into hiding with my uncle and aunt in Bolsward.

My mother, Corrie, is the granddaughter of Cornelia Swaab-Appel. The last
time she saw her grandmother, uncles, aunts and cousins was when she was
four years old.

Alfred Kahn, my great-uncle, Trude (Bauer) Kahn, my great aunt and their 13 year old daughter, Annemarie Kahn,  all died in Auschwitz.  I am related to both of the parents as they were from my father's and mother's family. 

This initiative – driven in particular by the chair of the Dutch Auschwitz Committee, Jacques Grishaver – is worthwhile on many levels and there are a number of things that struck me about it. Firstly, we are close to the seventy year mark of the end of the war and the generation that consciously lived through it, survived it, is disappearing.  My own father, passed away last year and his formative years as a teenager were spent in war torn Europe where he had to hide during the last year of the war.

My father was active in the resistance movement. However, he was betrayed in 1944 by a bad Dutch person.
This event has had a huge effect on my life.
Despite the good upbringing I received from my mother, I am convinced that my life would have been completely different if I had known my father.

My first grandchild, a boy called Levie, was born on 14 December 2013.

He is named after my grandfather Levie Bonn, who was killed with my grandmother Hanna Diamant in Sobibor on 23 April 1943.

My mother is named after her great-grandmother Sophie Sachs. When I was young I asked if she probably also named me after Hans, the brother of my father. My mother answered decisively that it was not the case, but that she simply thought Hans was a nice name.

My mother, Elsje Neeter, was 26 years old when both her parents were taken away and murdered. The fact that she never spoke badly about the Germans still amazes me. Throughout her later life this turned out to be the best character trait of my mother, never judging other people. She died in July 2013 in a caring institution at the age of 97. For the last year I visited her every day.

Almost every person who dies, wherever in the world, is given a funeral.

Loved ones come to pay their last respects and loving words are spoken.
People mourn and remember.
Then together we bury the person who has just left this world.
Later, surviving relatives can visit the grave, lay flowers and touch the stone bearing the name of the deceased.
In that way, the deceased lives on in the minds of those dear to them and we come to terms with the fact that one of us is no longer among the living. We can commemorate and remember.

As a child I played in the hiding closet in the house of my parents and heard part of the story of how a Jewish couple, Sander and Regina Israëls-Kern, hid with my grandparents in Varsseveld. Their oldest daughter was born while they were in hiding. I was also staying with them, and it made a deep impression on me.

I was born in Israel, the only daughter of parents who emigrated in 1947 to what was then Palestine, because life in Amsterdam had nothing more to offer them: parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews… they had all been murdered.

This afternoon I received your appeal to support the Holocaust Names Memorial. I did that, and ‘adopted’ the names of my four grandparents.

They are: Hartog Natkiel and Zientje Natkiel-van Dam (murdered on 2 April 1943 in Sobibor) on my father’s side; and Mozes Hartog Doof and Sara Doof-Reens, (murdered on 12 February 1943 in Auschwitz, together with almost all their children), on my mother’s side.

Even though I was born 11 years after the liberation, World War Two has always played an imperceptible, latent role in my life. I spent much of my youth with my grandparents. When they told stories, they were never specific about dates, but said things like ‘before the war’, ‘during the war’ or ‘after the war’.

My brother and I grew up as children without a granddad. That didn’t seem all that remarkable until, at some point, I realized that my father grew up without a father (and without a granddad either). Of course, we did have another granddad, but it wasn’t quite the same.

On my father’s side: he brought my aunt Sofie Wittmann-Stein, her husband Emanuel and son Friedrich from Vienna to the Netherlands after the annexation of Austria. In 1942 they were deported and murdered in Auschwitz; other members of his family were deported from Vienna and murdered. He also took my grandmother Chana Stein to the Netherlands, but she died in the Jewish Home (Joodse Invalide) in Amsterdam before the Nazis deported all the occupants of this institute.

In 1943 my father, violinist, was betrayed by a member of the NSB and taken from his place of hiding during a raid. Father was deported but luckily returned from one of the abominable camps.

How hard and horrible life can be. Sometimes the fate suffered by some people is beyond description you don’t want to experience it!

Our father Jozef (we called him Joop) Swaalep, born on 25 July 1911, came from a family of 5 children (all of them boys), one of whom, Michel, died soon after birth. So he was saved from all ‘the misery’.

Joseph Schrijver didn’t keep a diary. No museum bears his name, his life hasn’t been filmed, and he isn’t the subject of any musical. You could count on one hand the number of people alive who knew Joseph Schrijver.

What a tremendously good initiative this new Holocaust Memorial is. May the memorial serve as a reminder, a tangible object, a warning that this may and can NEVER happen again.

On 7 August 1927 a terrible tram accident occurred on Naarderstraat in Laren. Two trams collided. A number of people were killed, among them three members of one family. Husband and wife Emanuel Lisser and Jeannette Vischschraper and their young daughter Greta. The only member of the family to survive was eight-year-old Nico, although he was seriously injured. He had to have a leg amputated.

I chose Jetje Wilhelmina de Vries, because she was a schoolfriend of my mother’s. I still have the poetry album that belonged to my mother, and she often spoke about the Jewish girls who were in her class and who never returned after the war.

My uncle, Guillame v.d. Boogaart, died on 4 May 1945 on the Cap Arcona. The Germans were shipping him and some 9,000 other concentration camp inmates like cattle.

I think the Holocaust Memorial is a wonderful idea. The names of many Jewish people killed are listed in the former Hollandse Schouwburg, but it would be great if there were another memorial bearing the names of murdered Jewish families. I hope the project succeeds and wish the people behind it all success.

My name is Sandra Jansen. I am 48 years old and married with 3 daughters. So I only know about the war through my grandparents and parents. Three Jewish people hid in the house of my grandpa and grandma and survived the war.

I have chosen Roosje Drilsma. We were pupils at the same school.

She was a friend of my older sister. A beautiful girl. I remember that suddenly she stopped coming to school. The school was the Zaans Lyceum.

I would like to take this opportunity to offer my short impression of the murder of Mr de Miranda, of Jewish blood, by a Dutch policeman.

It happened in the final days of 1943. I was 14 years old at the time.

I knew this man, as he was married to a non-Jewish woman, and together they ran a business on Gangetje, a street in Leiden. That’s how I recognized him.

I never knew my grandparents. Their names were Moses and Rebecca Abram-de Paauw, and Nathan and Rachel Berkelo-van Coevorden. I’ll be happy when the Names Monument is built. I’ll be able to touch the names of my grandparents, because I’ve missed them so much.

I solemnly remember the Groenteman-Kroonenberg family, who lived at our address around 1940.