Biography

About Celina Rueff

Celine (or Celina) Rueff was a daughter of Leopold Rueff and Julie Levy from Basel, Switzerland. She had three brothers: Marcel, Paul and Louis and three sisters, Mathilde, Lucie and Berthe.

Celine Rueff married  Salomon Dekker (also called Leo) in Amsterdam on 10 August 1911, a son of  Levie Abraham Dekker and Rebecca van Vliet. He was a shopowner and dealer in ready made clothing. Salomon Dekker survived the Shoah, but Celine was killed in Sobibor.

Celine’s  sister Berthe was the youngest of all Rueff-siblings, born in 1894. When she came from Basel to Amsterdam in April 1920, she lived in with the family of Salomon (Leo) Dekker and Celine Rueff, till she got married to Jonas Kattenburg in December 1920.

Celine felt comfortable with the Dekker family and undertook several trips with them among others in 1924 when she went to the Vondelpark in Amsterdam with her sister-in-law Anna Dekker, her nephew Louis, a son of her brother-in-law Jacob Dekker, her niece Rebecca (Beppie), the daughter of her sister-in-law Emma Dekker. Of this event is a phothagraph preserved.

On 5 April 1933, Celine Rueff has been taken ill in at the psychiatric hospital “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch” in Apeldoorn, where she stayed until 17 May 1934, whence she has been transferred to the psychiatric institution “Provinciaal Ziekenhuis Meer en Berg” in Santpoort in the community of Bloemendaal.

When that institution was evacuated to Warnsfeld (near Zutphen) in connection with the construction of the Atlantikwall, she arrived on 15 January 1943 in the Groot Graffel. On 8 April 1943 she was "not recovered discharged" from the institution in Warnsfeld ant transferred to the Israelitic Emergency Hospital (Israelisch Noodziekenhuis) in Zutphen, from where she was taken to Westerbork on the night of 9-10 April 1943. On 13 April, Celina was deported with the 7th transport to Sobibor where on arrival there on 16 April 1943, she has been immediately killed.

City archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Salomon Dekker; the Coda-archives of Apeldoorn/peoples registry; website www.wiewaswie.nl, certificate of death made out in Haarlem, nr. B346 dated 9 December 1947 of Celina Dekker-Rueff; file cabinet of the Jewish Council, card of Celina Rueff; website https://1940-1945.bloemendaal.nl/index.php?id=16  with the history of the Provinciaal Ziekenhuis Meerenberg in Santpoort with a list of the nazi victims; Mr. John Stienen, researcher of the Psychiatric Hospital Groot Graffel in Zutphen and an addition of a visitor of the website.

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