Biography

About Marianna Barend, her husband Jacob Swaalep and their son Abraham.

Marianna Barend was the sixth of the nine children of Salomon Barend and Lena IJzerkoper. She married  4 Mei 1921 in Amsterdam Jacob Swaalep, usually called Jacques, a son of Abraham Swaalep and Femmetje Kosman. On 5 August 1931 their only son Abraham was born, who was known as “Appie”.

After their marriage, Jacob and Marianna lived in with Marianna’s brother Mozes Barend in the ‘s-Gravesandestraat 32 2nd floor. On 22 March 1923 they moved to Kuipersstraat 49 in Amsterdam-South and on 16 September 1946 the moved in a house at Cilliersstraat 13 1st floor in Amsterdam-East, which became also their last known address in Amsterdam. Five years later, their son Appie was born there too.

Jacob (Jacques Swaalep was working in the butcher’s trade. He was registered as butcher’s man, but at the time of the persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, ha apparently had a job at the Jewish Council as “cutter of mittens and insoles”. This appeared not to be recorded as such on his registration card of the Jewish Council; so far known, he and his family had no “exemption”(Sperre). But the Amsterdam Archive shows on his personal card that he was an employee of the Jewish Council since 4 March 1943 in a job as mentioned here.

At the time of the secretly prepared big round-ups of 20 June 1943, where more than 5500 Jews had to made “ready to march” (“marschfertig”), also Jacob Swaalep, his wife Marianna Barend and son Abraham (Appie) were arrested and taken to Westerbork. Which offense they would have made in completely unclear but the Swaalep family ended up in Westerbork in the penal barrack 67.

The transport list of 29 June 1943 shows among other things, that for married women only their maiden name was mentioned. It also appeared that this transport of nearly 24 deportees from Westerbork to Sobibor was only a so-called “normal transport (“Normal Transport”). No penal cases were added to this transport. Thus Jacob Swaalep, his wife Marianna Barend and son Abraham Swaalep were deported from penal barrack 67 in Westerbork on 29 June to Sobibor, where on arrival on 2 July 1943, they have been immediately killed.

Sources include Amsterdam City Archives, family registration card and archive card of Jacob Swaalep, archive card of Marianna Barend; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Jacob Swaalep, Marianna Swaalep-Barend and Abraham Swaalep, Transportlist of 29 June 1953 from the book Extermination camp Sobibor by Jules Schelvis and the Wikipedia listing of Jew Transports from the Netherlands.