Cato Bloemhof was a daughter of Salomon Abraham Bloemhof and Roosje Ossendrijver. From her father's first marriage she had two sisters, Judith and Reintje and a brother Mozes, who were all murdered with their families during the Shoah. After the death of Roosje Ossendrijver, her father married Anna Vleeskruijer and Cato Bloemhof again had two more sisters, Judic and Johanna, who were also murdered with their families during the Holocaust.
Cato Bloemhof married in Amsterdam on 7 November 1912 the diamond cutter Hartog de Leeuw from Kortenhoef, born on 20 December 1889 as son of Abraham de Leeuw and Eva de Lange. The couple had four children, namely Eva, Roosje, Reintje and Abraham. Only Roosje and her family survived the Holocaust; the other three children and their parents were killed during the Shoah.
When Hartog de Leeuw was not yet married, he lived in Hilversum. He came as a apprentice diamond worker to Amsterdam where he lived in with Mrs. Cohen in the Lepelkruisstraat 13. On 9 September 1911 he moved to Miguelstraat 141. (When the Wibautstraat was constructed in 1936, a few streets disappeared, including Miguelstraat and also the Spoorbaanstraat - source website "Het Geheugen van Oost"), but the day after his marriage to Cato Bloemhof, they moved in with W. de Goede, who lived at Ruyschstraat 120.
In 1913 they moved to Spoorbaanstraat 32 II (disappeared in 1936), after which eight more relocations followed; on 29 October 1935 they moved into a house at Brinkstraat 38 in Betondorp in Amsterdam-East. In the meantime, the De Leeuw family also lived in the municipalities of Nieuwer Amstel and Diemen. From 1930, Hartog de Leeuw worked as a florist en then lived with his wife and children at Kraaipanstraat 29 in the Transvaal district of Amsterdam-East.
After the mandatory registration of all the Jews in the Netherlands in 1941, Hartog de Leeuw was "exempted from deportation because of function" ("gesperrt") by the Jewish Council. From March 1923 he was also working as a gardener and assistant grave digger at the N.I.H.S. the Nederlands Israëlitische Hoofd Synagoge in Amsterdam. Also his wife Cato Bloemhof had an "exemption” because of her husband's position. But when both received a call to report for the so-called “Arbeitseinsatz” , they decided to go into hiding. Thanks to his work, Hartog had contacts with many growers of plants around Amsterdam. He went into hiding with a grower in Osdorp and Cato found a place in Uithoorn.
One summer evening, in mid-June 1943, Cato decided to visit her daughter Roosje, who lived on Bos en Lommerweg in Amsterdam and who was mixed-married to Herman Kars. Cato did not wear the yellow "Jewish star" and as a hiding person she had a fake ID. When she had just arrived with her daughter, the bell rang and Cato Bloemhof was arrested by two members of the infamous Henneicke group, one Reuskens and Cassee, for not wearing the yellow Jewish Star. They took her and delivered her to the Hollandsche Schouwburg on 15 June 1943.
Then Herman Kars decided to inform his father-in-law Hartog de Leeuw that his wife Cato Bloemhof had been arrested and he went to Osdorp. In the end Hartog de Leeuw agreed to go with Herman to the Hollandsche Schouwburg on the Plantage Middenlaan to join his wife there. On the back of Herman's bicycle, Hartog was dropped off at the Hollandsche Schouwburg on 17 June. Both were treated as so-called "criminal cases" for not wearing the compulsory yellow "Jewish star", for evading the call for the Arbeitseisatz, by going into hiding and possession of forged identity cards.
After her daughter Roosje had collected some clothes and Jewish stars at her mother's request from the parental home in the Brinkstraat, Hartog and Cato were detained in the Schouwburg until 29 June 1943. When they were deported to Westerbork and arrived there that 29th of June, they were both locked up in the penal barrack 67. However, that same day they were deported with the 16th transport, to Sobibor together with 2395 other victims, where they were immediately murdered on arrival on 2 July 1943.
The Sobibor Foundation published the following on their website about the 16th transport from Westerbork to Sobibor: After an interruption of 3 weeks, another train left from Westerbork to Sobibor on Tuesday 29 June, the 16th now. There were 2397 people on board, none of whom would survive the extermination camp.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards and archive cards of Hartog de Leeuw and Salomon Abraham Bloemhof; closed volumes of family registrations 1892-1920/Bloemhof; website Het Geheugen van Oost/Miguelstraat; website Stichting Sobibor/the 16th transport; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Hartog de Leeuw, Cato de Leeuw Bloemhof and Abraham de Leeuw; additional information by Mrs. Evelina de Wispelaere – granddaughter of Hartog de Leeuw and Cato Bloemhof and the book “Gezichten van Joods Verzet (Faces of Jewish Resistance) , paged 222-228, edited in 2020 by the Nederlandse Kring voor Joodse Genealogie (Dutch Society of Jewish Genealogy) (ISBN 978-90-822758-1-0) .
(This version of the biography was updated on 15 July 2022.).