Simon Coini was a son of Hartog Coini and Rebecke van Beem. He was born on 1 November 1878 in Amsterdam and, like his father, he was a barber by trade. Simon came from a family of six children, of which he was the fifth and the second Simon in the family; the first Simon (1873) had died in the same year 1873, aged only eleven months. His eldest sister Rachel (1869) died in 1935, his youngest sister Rosine (1881) died a few months before the outbreak of war in February 1940, but his sisters Maria (1875) and Catharina (1873) survived the war. Simon was the only one of the family to be killed during the Holocaust.
In 1903, at the age of 25, Simon Coini left for London, where he remained for 9 months; on 23 December of that year he returned to Amsterdam. He married in Zaandam on 9 November 1911 Rachel Fregge, born on 4 July 1883 as a daughter of Joseph Fregge and Jeannette Blom. Rachel also came from a family with six children, viz. Hermann (1871), Jordan (1873), Leeman (1874), Rebecca (1876), Sara (1877) and Rachel herself. The Fregge family lived in Antwerp, Brussels, London and Paris, among other places. As far as is known, Simon and Rachel had no children.
After Simon and Rachel were married, they moved into accommodation with Koning at Amstel 286; in 1912 they moved to Govert Flinckstraat 309 and in 1913 to Kerkstraat 375. From Tilanusstraat, where they had come to live in 1915, they moved into a house at Ruyschstraat 94 ground floor in 1928, where the women's and men's barber's shop was also located. But on 30 September 1943 they were obliged to move to the Transvaal district in Amsterdam-East, where they ended up at Ben Viljoenstraat 6 hs.
In the meantime, Simon Coini and his wife Rachel were registered with the Jewish Council in 1941, but Simon and his wife were provisionally exempted from deportation “because of function”. The reason was that Simon's ladies' hairdresser's- and men's barbershop was classified as a "Jewish Local", a business where only Jews were allowed to have a haircut and shave. For this he received the exemption “Lok A 328”.
However, when in the summer of 1943 all exemptions were declared null and void by the Germans and almost all Jews had already been deported from Amsterdam to the "East", the Jewish Council was also abolished. To "complete" everything, about 170 people were still placed on an exception list: they received a so-called “Ausnahme Bescheinigung” (AU-Be), a very last exemption (“Sperre”).
Simon and his wife Rachel also managed to obtain such an “Ausnahme Bescheinigung”, which meant that they were still – albeit provisionally again – exempted from deportation. However, on 29 September 1943, Amsterdam was declared “Judenrein” after all – almost all Jews were deported and the Jewish Council no longer existed.
From notes on both their registration cards from the Jewish Council it can be deduced that they were deported to Westerbork on 9 October 1943, after being arrested, together with 295 other Jewish inhabitants of Amsterdam; all 295 persons were destined for the penal barrack 67. Possibly because as Jews they were no longer allowed to stay in the "Judenreine Amsterdam" after 29 September 1943......
That 9th of October 1943, there was also a transport of the sick from Amsterdam with 20 people, half of whom ended up in one of the hospital barracks (6, 81, 82 or 83) in Westerbok. 144 other Jewish inhabitants of Amsterdam were also deported to Westerbork that day, but were not destined for penal barrack 67. They ended up elsewhere in the camp.
It is unknown what Simon and Rachel had to endure in Westerbork until their deportation. They were only put on transport to Auschwitz on 25 January 1944, along with 809 other deportees. Upon arrival on 28 January 1944, Simon Coini and Rachel Coini-Fregge were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nothing is known about survivors of this transport.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, closed family registration cards/Hartog Coini (1843) and Joseph Fregge (1845), family registration card of Simon Coini, archive cards of Simon Coini and Rachel Fregge; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Simon Coini and Rachel Coini-Fregge; the Red Cross archives/transportlist Amsterdam-Westerbork of 9 October 1943 and the Wikipedia website Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl.