Maurits Scheffer was a son of Wolf Scheffer and Reine Pachter. He married 11 October 1939 in Amsterdam to Esther Mendes, a daughter of Benjamin Mendes and Heintje Wurms. On 11 April 1942 their daughter Willy Henny Scheffer was born. She was killed in Auschwitz, together with her mother, on 14 September 1942.
Maurits’ father, Wolf Scheffer, a dealer, passed away already at age 25 on 20 August 1917 and he was interred in te Jewish Cemetery in Diemen on 21 August 1917. Maurits’ mother remarried in 1920 to Hartog Bronkhorst but they divorced in 1935. In 1941 Reintje married again to Andries Pieter Ravestein. She passed away in Amsterdam in 1950.
The family of Maurits Scheffer has been registered already on 19 July 1942 but were sent to Camp Westerbork on 9 September 1942. From there they were deported to Auschwitz, where Maurits’ spouse Esther Mendes and his daughter Willy Henny, have been killed there immediately upon arrival in 14 September 1942.
Maurits Scheffer however has been forced by the Germans to do hard labor and arrived in the hard labor camp for Jews Reigersfeld (Zwangarbeitslager für Juden Reigersfeld) (in Polish Birawa), located in the province of Upper Silesia near the Polish place Cosel/Kosel. There was a men’s- and a womens camp. Research has shown that it was there that Maurits Scheffer was married again on 28 October 1943 to Hellen Galizer from Oswieçim, born 4 November 1918 and a daughter of Benzion Galizer and Regina Goldberg.The research has also shown that Hellen Galizer has survived the Shoah and that she came to Den Haag after the war in 1946, where she claimed to be the widow of Adolf Hordiner from Sambor Poland. However, her marriage to Maurits Scheffer at the Arbeitslager Reigersfeld was under Dutch law not valid. In 1949 she came to Amsterdam, where she got married to Sebaldf Kurt Israal from Buer (Germany). Maurits Scheffer however lost his life eventually in the nearby located hard labor camp Blechammer (Zwangarbeitslager Blechhammer) in the Cosel region on 15 October 1944.
The period from 28 August till 12 December 1942 was named the so called Cosel-period, due to the fact that from a number of transports with deported Jews, also from Belgium and France, at the station of Cosel, 80 km west from Auschwitz, men who were fit for work according to the Germans, were unloaded, and who were forced to hard labor in the surrounding camps (source: Wikipedia, https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozle)
City Archive of Amsterdam, archive cards of Maurits Scheffer, Esther Mendes and Reintje Pachter; information by the Amsterdam Archive regarding the 2nd marriage of Maurits Scheffer; websites www.wiewaswie.nl, www.zoekakten.nl en akevoth/mokum/burialpermits; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Maurits Scheffer, Esther Scheffer-Mendes and Willy Henny Scheffer.