Izak Hartog Cohen was born on 16 April 1920 in Leiden as the youngest of the two sons of David Cohen from Uden and Kaatje Cohen from Leeuwarden. His elder brother Lodewijk has survived the Holocaust. Izak Hartog Cohen married at the age of 22 in transit camp Westerbork the 16-year older Heintje Zilverberg, who was born on 14 August 1904 in Hoogeveen as daughter of Jacob Zilverberg and Roosje de Groot.
Izak Hartog was a student at the Dutch Israelitic Seminary to be educated as a religious teacher. On 24 October 1938 he arrived from Leiden in Amsterdam and then lived in the Tilanusstraat 24 2nd floor, where he stayed till February 1942. On 10 September 1940 Izak Hartog was still involved in a traffic accident; he was hit on his bicycle by a motorbike from the German Wehrmacht, whereby he torned his raincoat and his bicycle was damaged. The report of it is to be found in the Police Reports Amsterdam ’40-;45 of 12 September 1940 (only dutch language).
In the early days of 1942 Izal Hartog left Amsterdam for Hilversum, where he was employed as “educational clerk” at the emergency location of the S.A. Rudelsheim Foundation at the Heideparkweg 51 in Hilversum, for which he had since 2 February an I.D. from the Jewish Council (nr. Z0644), but he had no “Sperre” (exemption from deportation). At the other hand, he had a Sperre number/stamp, nr. 489694, but that number from the 40.000-50.000 series stood for a kind of “mixed bag”, a list of over 800 names. Persons on this list were referred to as “Protektions und Angebotsjuden”, (Jews with provisional protection) who needed further consideration in respect to the exemption of deportation.
Heintje Zilverberg was already employed as head of the housekeeping department of the S.A. Rudelsheim Foundation at the emergency location at Heideparkweg 51 in Hilversum. Before the she came in Hilversum, she worked for the housekeeping of the Dutch Israëlitich Hospital in Amsterdam and later already in the Rudelsheim Foundation. Most likely Izak Hartog Cohen and Heintje Zilverberg have met each other there. They were both carried off from that address to Westerbork on 8 April 1943, where she ended up in barrack 66 and he in barrack 65.
Four days later, on 12 April 1943, Izak Hartog Cohen and Heintje Zilverberg were married in transit camp Westerbork. Whether the idea was that by marriage, exemption from deportation could be achieved, is not known. Their honeymoon lasted only five weeks because on 18 May they were both deported to Sobibor. On arrival there, Izak Hartog Cohen and his wife Heintje Zilverberg were immediately killed there in the gas chambers there on 21 May 1943.
Sources include the website wiewaswie.nl; "Ondergang" volume I by Dr. J. Presser, page 290; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Izak Hartog Cohen and Heintje Zilverberg and the record of marriage certificates of the Westerbork municipality, currently at the archives of Gemeente Midden-Drenthe in Beilen.