Biography

About Saartje Meijer-Philips and her family

Saartje Philips was a daughter of the draper Izak Philips and Eva Weijel. She married 2 November 1920 in Zutphen the cattle trader and the later room renter in Den Haag, Salomon Meijer, a son of Abraham Meijer and Betje Spier. This wedding actually was a twin-marriage: on 2 November 1920 her sister Mientje married Benjamin Heimans in Zutphen too. Saartje and Salomon had one daughter Eva, who was just as her parents killed in the Shoah.

After their marriage, Saartje and Salomon had a delicatessen shop in Enschede, but moved later to Den Haag (it is not known when that was). There they rented rooms in a three-storey building at Van Alkemadelaan 43. A JOKOS list shows that all these rooms were extensively furnished. An ad in the Joodsche Weekblad of 26 December 1941 reveals that at that time Salomon Meijer’s pension was still running well because one was looking for a household aid.

The registration cards of the Jewish Council do not make clear what happened to the Meijer family: Salomon Meijer was registered 10 September 1942 and together with his wife and daughter Eva put on transport to Auschwitz already on 11 September. Saartje Meijer-Philips and her daughter Eva were killed immediately upon arrival there on 14 September 1942. On the other hand, her husband Salomon had to endure more than six months of hardships before he was killed somewhere in Mid Europe on 31 March 1943.

From the website https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozle:  The date of transport of 11 September 1942 is in the periond between 28 August till 12 December 1942, which was known as the so-called Cosel-period, because a number of transports with deported Jews, also from Belgium and France, stopped at the Cosel railway station, 80 km west from Auschwitz, were men had to step out the trains of whom the Germans had the impression that they were suitable to work in the surrounding labor camps. Those, who remained in the train were sent to Auschwitz. In this period, the Germans fetched about 9000 men from 39 trains to Auschwitz, from which 3500 of them of 18 trains from Westerbork. From the 9000 men who were taken from the trains in Cosel, only 700 till 900 men survived the war. From the 3500 men from Holland only 181, of whom 126 from the camp Blechhammer. The freight station of Cosel, the spot where the selections took place, is not really changed since 1942. On 2 September 2016 a monument to commemorate the victims has been revealed by the survivors.

It is therefore not impossible that Salomon Meijer, then 49 years of age, has been taken from the transport of 11 September 1942 to do hard labor somewhere in the surrounding camps.

 Sources: Municipal Archive of Den Haag regarding the death certificate of Salomon Meijer, 1953 Series C nr.109; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, cards of Salomon, Saarthe and Eva Meijer; website https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozle. The editors have taken some parts of the text of the biographical sketch of Salomon Meijer, which was written by a visitor of the website.

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