Salomon Munnikendam was a son of Abraham Munnikendam and Mathilde Rueff. His father Abraham Munnikendan was born in Amsterdam on 2 March 1875 and passed away there already on 27 January 1924. His wife Mathilde Rueff wa born on 28 June 1876 in the southern part of the Alsace, in Blotzheim near Basel. She passed away in Amsterdam on 15 March 1925. Both were interred in the Jewish Cemetery of Muiderberg.
Salomon Munnikendam was born in Amsterdam on 2 September 1906 and was a diamond worker by profession. When his mother Mathilde Rueff passed away in March 1925, he was only 18 years old. He then came to live at home of his aunt Celien Rueff and her husband Salomon Dekker, who lived at the Oude Zijds Achterburgwal in Amsterdam. But when aunt Celien was hospitalized in April 1933 in the Central Israelitic Psychiatric Hospital “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch”, Salomon then was accommodated with other family: with his aunt Lucie Rueff and her husband Joseph Barmes, who lived at Blasiusstraat 66 1st floor in Amsterdam-East.
Ab van West, who was engaged to Salomon’s cousin Juliette Barmes, brought Sal into contact with Gertrud (Trude) Roth, who was born in Germany in 1906 but was employed as a servant maid by the German family Röttgen in the Ruysdaelstraat in Amsterdam. As an orphan of 12 years old, she was adopted in the German Wattenscheid by Levy and Elise Spiero and used therefore sometimes (unofficially) the surname Spiero. On 22 January 1934, their engagement add appeared in the papers with the text: Engaged, Trude Spiero and Sal Munnikendam and on 19 October 1934, they got married in Wattenscheid and also their chupah was there.
After their wedding in 1934 they returned to Amsterdam where they moved into a house in the Lomanstraat 2 at the 3rd floor, whereupon Trude also brought her foster mother and meantime widowed Frau Spiero from Wattenscheid to Amsterdam. On 18 September 1938 their son Ruben Abraham was born there.
One year later, on 28 August 1939 the general mobilization of the Dutch Army started which eventually had 300.000 troops at its disposal. In the months after the mobilization the Dutch Army places soldiers all over the country and started preparing the defense against a possible attack.
Salomon Munnikendam was called up for military service in the Dutch Army, in which he had the rank of sergeant. However, his regiment was encamped in Weesp so the Munnikendam family and Frau Elise Spiero had to move from the Lomanstraat in Amsterdam to Weesp, where they lived in the Prins Bernardlaan. However, when the war broke out, Elise Spiero was not allowed to remain in the area of the waterline as a German Citizen. She was seen as dangerous to the state.
Salomon’s wife Trude, son Ruben and Frau Elise Spiero had to return to Amsterdam, where they ended up on 5 June 1940 via a guest address in the Valeriusstraat in the Haarlemmermeerstraat 90 2nd floor. And after the capitulation also Salomon Munnikendam returned home. Besides being a warehouse clerk at Gerzon’s fashion store, he had become yet also the function of substitute purchasing manager of the fabric department there and at the outbreak of the war, he was the purchasing manager of fabrics.
From the Jewish Council cartotheque it appeared that Salomon Munnikendam was registered in Westerbork on 27 July 1942 and that he at some point – for unknown reasons – had been locked up in the penal barrack 66 and later in the penal barrack 67. On 12 December 1942 he was put on transport as a "penal case" to Auschwitz but on arrival there on 14/15 December, he was not immediately sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau but he was deployed as a forced labourer. In the end, on 23 February 1943, Salomon Munnikendam succumbed there to the hardships and inhuman conditions.
Salomon’s wife Gertrud Roth and his son Ruben were registered in Westerbork on 23 September 1943 and just one year later, on 4 September 1944, put on transport to Theresienstadt. On their registration card of the Jewish Council, a small notation was made, “ged.”, meaning “gedoopt” (baptized): her own parents Martha Rosenfeld and Meyer Roth had ever baptized her because of fear for anti-Semitism in Trude’s place of birth Nitschareuth in Thüringen, but Trude never cared about “that piece of paper” in her youth. But during the war, it might be the saving of both of them and therefore also her son Ruben had to be baptized, which has been done by a minister of the Protestant Reformed Congregation (for a lot of money). Thus they had become “Christians” which may have been the reason they were not deported to Auschwitz. They survived the Holocaust in Theresienstadt and returned to Amsterdam in June 1945.
Sources among others, the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Abraham Munnikendam, archive cards of Salomon Munnikendam and Gertrud Roth; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Salomon Munnikendam, Gertrud Munnikendam-Roth and Ruben Abraham Munnikendam; the wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl, additions of a visitor of the website and additions from familyh stories by surving family members.