Grietje, Anna and Jeannette were daughters of Jankel Chasler from Odessa and Vrouwtje van der Borg from Rotterdam. In this family was also a daughter Rosalina and a son Carl, who have survived the Holocaust. There has been also a Jeanette, born in 1905 but who died in that same year. The Jankel Chasler family lived in Rotterdam.
Grietje Chasler, born on 19 May 1904 in Rotterdam, married there at the age of 25 on 27 November 1929 the 31-year old non-Jewish Karel Maurits Knip from Rotterdam, who worked as a head of a forwarding department. He was a son of Antoon Knip and Catharina Johanna Bax. After their wedding in Rotterdam, the couple left for Overboschlaan 28 in De Bilt. On 15 November 1930 they had a son, Ronald, who was born in Utrecht. On 14 January 1936 they were registered again in Rotterdam at the addres Benthuizerstraat 86b. The marriage however did not last and on 14 December 1938 dissolved by the District Court of Utrecht; the divorce has been registered in the Civil Registry of Rotterdam on 23 January 1939. Notes on the registration card of Grietje Chasler from the cartotheque of the Jewish Council showed that her ex-husband and son have survived the war.
Afterwards – presumably in 1940 or 1941 – Grietje married again to Arnold Abas, who was born on 12 November 1913 in Amsterdam but resided in 1939 in the Aert van Nesstraat in Rotterdam. He was a son of Mozes Abas and Alida Morpurgo and worked as salesman and window dresser.
Grietje and Arnold lived in the Sourystraat 22c in Rotterdam Blijdorp, where Grietje Chasler in the summer of 1942 received the message of the death of her husband Arnold Abas, who got killed in Mauthausen on 7 July 1942. He may have been able to be present at the birth of his daughter Alice, who wsa born 13 May 1942. It is not known why, when and where Arnold Abas was arrested and deported to Mauthausen. On 24 July 1942 his widow Grietje Chasler placed an obituary for him in the “Joodsche Weekblad” (Jewish Weekly).
Not much later, Grietje Abas-Chasler and her 4-months old little daughter Alice were carried off to Westerbork on 26 September and deported from there to Auschwitz. On arrival there on 1 October they were both immediately killed.
Anna Chasler, born 25 April 1913 in Rotterdam, was unmarried and there is not much known about her. On 13 May 1943 she was carried off to Westerbork where she stayed in barrack 81, a hospital barrack. On 25 May she was put on transport to Sobibor, where on arrival there on 28 May 1943, she was immediately killed in the gas chambers there.
Jeannette Chasler, born 17 February 1915 in Rotterdam, was unmarried and lived in the Archimedesstraat 137 in Den Haag; she worked as a sales representative. Other sources show that Jeannette Chasler was betrayed and arrested in November 1943. Her registration card from the Jewish Council show that she arrived in Westerbork only 5 February 1944, where she has been locked in in the penal barrack 67. She probably spent about 2 ½ months elsewhere in captivity, before being sent to Westerbork.
She was put on transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz on 3 March 1944, a transport with more than 730 other deportees. On arrival there on 6 March she must have been spent several months in Auschwitz-camp, till she and other female prisoners were finally deported in August 1944 from Auschwitz to Bergen Belsen. From there, some of them were sent to other concentration camps as forced labourers, but due to hardship and diseases, Jeannette Chassler eventually has lost her life in Bergen Belsen on 31 May 1945.
Sources among others: the City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration cards of Jankel Chasler and Karel Maurits Knip/Grietje Chasler; weddingcertificate of Karel Maurits Knip and Grietje Chasler dated 27 Nov 1929; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Grietje Abas-chasler, Arnold Abas, Anna Chasler and Jeannette Chasler and the Wikipedia list of jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl.