Joseph Zwaab, born in 1879, was a son of Mozes Zwaab and Hanna Gomes de Mesquita. He was a diamond worker and unmarried. In Joseph’s family six children were born, namely Machiel (1875-1901), Rebecca (1877-1943), Victor (1883-1942), Esther (1885-1886), Hijman (1888-1942) and Joseph self (1879-1942)
Also Joseph left his parental home 4 July 1910 and moved into a house at Nieuwe Keizersgracht 29, together with his then still unmarried brothers Hijman and Victor. His father Mozes Zwaab had died already in 1902 and his mother Hanna Gomes de Mesquite passed away 23 May 1910. She was interred 25 May 1910 in the Jewish Cemetery at Muiderberg.
On 1 May 1914 Joseph Zwaab and his brother Victor moved from Nieuwe Keizersgracht 29 to nr. 27; on 3 April both their addres became Weesperstraat 10 and in April 1926 they moved from there to nr. 45. Per 17 October 1928 Joseph Zwaab came living in permantely with his sister Rebecca Zwaab and her husband Eliazer Gompers at Nieuwe Keizersgracht 56 2nd floor. His brother Victor married in June 1928 and lived at another address and his brother Hijman lived elsewhere in Amsterdam too.
Joseph Zwaab was deported to Westerbork Friday 18 September 1942 and put on transport to Auschwitz Monday 21 September. This transport of 713 deportees, of whom only one should survive the Shoah, arrived in Auschwitz 24 September 1942. That same day Joseph Zwaab has been killed there in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card and archive card of Joseph Zwaab; list of Jew transports from the Netherlands and the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Joseph Zwaab.
This person is commemorated on the monument Schaduwkade in Amsterdam. The names of the 200 jewish inhabitants of the Nieuwe Keizersgracht are placed on the canal wall opposite the houses where they once lived.