Emanuel Fortuin was born 20 December 1896 in Amsterdam as son of Isidoor Fortuin and Rebekka Woudstra. He was a teacher physical education and a member of the gymnastic association “Kracht en Vlugheid” (Power and Quickness) in Amsterdam. During the “twenties” he was a well known gymnast.
Many male and female champion gymnasts were Jewish. Names from that time were M. Biet, Emanuel Fortuin, Israël Wijnschenk, miss Elka de Levie and Ans Polak. Many of them were members of a gymnastics association and one of those associations was the male and female “Labour Gymnastics Association” and another was a club consisting mainly of Jewish participants “Quickness and Power”, which used the gym of the H.B.S. (school) on the Mauritskade as a training location. Source: website joodsamsterdam.nl/turners.
Emanuel Fortuin married at the age of 31 in Amsterdam on 19 September 1928 the 19-year old Anna Gompers, the daughter of Eliazer Gompers and Rebecca Zwaab. From that marriage their son Ido was born on 28 December 1929. However, the marriage did not last and on 16 January 1935 the marriage was dissolved by divorce.
Two years later, on 24 November 1937, Emanuel Fortuin remarried Sara Aletrino, born 10 April 1898 in Amsterdam as a daughter of Maurits Aletrino and Schoontje Graveur. A few days later, they moved into a house in the Mauritsstraat 16 3rd floor in Amsterdam-East. From this wedlock no offspring was born.
On 26 June 1942, SS-Hauptsturmführer Ferdinand Aus der Fünten of the “Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung” informed the Jewish Council that men, women and families would be transferred to labour camps in Germany “ein Polizeilicher Arbeitseinsatz”. In “The Jewish Weekly”(Het Joodsche Weekblad), the extra edition of 14 July 1942, the Jewish Council published the threat of the Sicherheits Polizei. With this threat, the beginning of the major transports was announced. The call lists were drawn up by the Germans (Zentralstelle). Indispensable persons were removed by it by the Jewish Council. Blinded trams were used to bring them to the Central Station of Amsterdam, where trains were ready for Westerbork, or they had to go to a site near Muiderpoortstation, after which, after a long wait, the train appeared that brought them to Westerbork. Source: Archives of the Dutch Red Cross/Transports to camp Westerbork.
In the summer of 1942, Emanuel Fortuin and Sara Aletrion received a call for this “Polizeilicher Arbeitseinsatz””: Emanuel with call number 1635/9 and Sara with number 1635/10. However they did not respond to it as they were exempted from this so-called “provision of additional work in Germany”, because they both had a “Sperre” from the Jewish Council “because of function”. Both had “Sperre”number 20/95541.
Emanuel was Voluntary Carer with the Dutch Israëlitic District Association at Houtmarkt 10 (the former Jonas Daniel Meijerplein), and taught gymnastics at the Louis Botha School for Jewish children in the Kraaipanstraat 58 in the Transvaal District of Amsterdam-East and at the Plantage School at Plantage Muidergracht 20 in the centre of Amsterdam. Emanuel Fortuin had a Jewish Council identifaction with nr. 0234.
Also Sara Aletrino was “employed” with the Jewish Council: she was a Voluntary carer for the Poor and Family Guardian at the Department of Social Affairs. Due to that, she too was exempt from deportation for the time being with the Jewish Council identification nr. 0159.
However, during the raids that were held at the end of May 1943, they were both arrested and brought to a site near the Muiderpoortstation. After a long wait of many hours, the special train appeared which brought them to Westerbork. There, Emanuel Fortuin and Sara Aletrino ended up in barrack 58. On 1 June they were deported to Sobibor and on arrival on 4 June 1943, they were both immediately killed in the gas chambers there.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, archive cards of Emanuel Fortuin and Sara Aletrino; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Emanuel Fortuin and Sara Fortuin-Aletrino; website Joods Amsterdam.nl/Kraaipanstraat and Plantage Muidergracht; Dr. J. Presser “Ondergang” volume 1, page 287/Stamps.