Joseph Gompers, born 22 March 1899 in Amsterdam, was a son of Philip Gompers and Rebecca de Haan. He married on 20 January 1921 in Amsterdam Marianne Loonstein, who was born 20 October 1895 in Amsterdam as a daughter of Jacob Loonstein and Naatje Speijer. The couple had one son, Philip Louis, born 17 December 1921 but who have been killed in Mauthausen on 24 September 1941, just 19 years old. Another child was born in 1924, stillborn however, which has been declared inanimate on 22 December 1924.
Joseph Gompers was educated in literature and he was a publicist, poet and writer. For his daily maintenance, he worked at the Incassobank on the Diamond Exchange in Amsterdam, where he was chief of the safe-deposit department.
Joseph lived at Weesperstraat 26 1st floor, but after he got married, he and Marianne Loonstein moved to Blasiusstraat 30 2nd floor, where their son Philip Louis was born. On 25 July 1934, they moved into a house at Eendrachtstraat 28 2nd stock in the River district of Amsterdam. Exact two years later, they moved to Corellistraat 5 2nd floor in the Apollo district of Amsterdam-South. In 1940, Joseph’s uncle Barend Gompers came living in with them: shortly before, he had become a widower of Aaltje Blitz; Barend had no offspring.
Joseph Gompers was “Gesperrt”- exempted from deportation - “because of function by the Jewish Council. There he was the deputy general secretary at Nieuwe Keizersgracht 58. Also his wife Marianne was exempted from deportation for the time being. They had an exempt number 1/80353 and 1/80354, numbers from the 80.000 series, that were assigned to those, who were supposedly indispensable for the German war industry, the “Rüstungsjuden” (armor Jews), which also included the “Diamantjuden”(diamond Jews).
But Marianne Loonstein had also her own “Sperre”: for the time being she was exempted from deportation because of her position as “Family Guardian in the Association for Israelitic Family Guardianship” which she did for the last 15 years and she was a member of the “Jewish Family Guardianship Control Committee”. The Jewish Council had issued her an I.D. with number 9; her husband Joseph Gompers had a Jewish Council I.D. with number 1503.
Still Joseph and Marianne were arrested and carried off to Westerbork during the large-scale and secretly prepared round-up of 20 June 1943. Joseph ended up there in barrack 55 and Marianne in barrack 57. However, both were released from Westerbork and could return to Amsterdam on 28 June 1943. But on 29 September they were arrested again and ended up again in Westerbork, this time in the penal barrack 66. This was the end; there were hardly any Jews left and now the elite – members of the Jewish Council – were arrested too and put on transport to Westerbork. At the end of September, the German occupier considered their task accomplished: Amsterdam was “Judenfrei”. (free of Jews).
Joseph Gompers and his wife Marianne Loonstein were put on transport from Westerbork to Bergen Belsen on 11 January 1944. However, when British troops approached that camp in the early months of 1945, the SS started taking prisoners out of that camp. Between 6 and 11 April 1945 three freight trains were loaded with a total of ± 6800 people, whom the SS called “Austauschjuden” (exchange Jews). In fact, they were hostages, being deported to Theresienstadt.
The last of these three trains was designated as “the lost transport” or “the lost train”, that came to a standstill in the small town of Tröbitz in Brandenburg, after a ramble through parts of Germany, not yet occupied by the Allies. On 23 April 1945, advancing troops of the Soviet Army found the train. They freed the prisoners from the wagons, about 200 of whom had not survived the journey. In the weeks that followed, an epidemic left 320 people dead from the consdequences of the “transport of the dead”.
In that train in Tröbitz, Joseph Gompers lost his life on 30 April 1945 and his wife Marianne Loonstein on 6 May 1945. The deceased were interred in a communal grave behind the management barracks of the “Hansa” quarry.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Joseph Gompers and archive cards of Joseph Gompers, Marianne Loonstein and Philip Louis Gompers; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Joseph Gompers and Marianne Gompers-Loonstein; the publication “Vermoedelijk op transport”(presumably on transport)/stamps and exemptions; website De Dokwerker.nl/de Joodse Raad; the Wikipedia website Het verloren transport and the Wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl.