Alijda Cohen-van Beek was the widow of the butcher Abraham Cohem, who wsa born on 23 January 1874 in Rotterdam and to whom she was married in Amersfoort on 11 October 1899. Abraham Cohen passed away however already on 6 May 1920 in Rotterdam and was interred there in the Jewish Cemetery Toepad. Alijda van Beek was a daughter of Mozes Hartog van Beek and Rozina van Esso and she was born in Amersfoort on 23 July 1880.
Alijda van Beek and Abrahah Cohen together had six children, namely Izaak on 15 September 1900, Salomon on 13 December 1904, Elizabeth on 24 October 1906 and Flora op 3 December 1914. Those four children survived the Holocaust. But there were also Mozes, born on 3 November 1901 and Rosina onp 13 December 1902; those two children died already before their first year of their lives.
Alida van Beek arrived in on 26 October 1899 from Amersfoort in Rotterdam, where she was registered at the address of het husband at Boezemsingel 102, moved a few times in the city to aomong others Boezemdwarsstraat, Veemarkt and Spiegelnisserkade. After the passing of het husband in 1920 she moved on 1 April 1921 to Amersfoort. Then she lived with her daughters Flora and Elizabeth again in Rotterdam in 1930 but up from 1936 again at various addresses in Amsterdam and Amersfoort, where she was still registered since 16 July 1941 at Rubensstraat 59.
Her last known addres in Amsterdam was per 30 October 1942 Westeinde 21 parterre. But Municipal administrations are slow and mostly behind because Alida Cohen-van Beek was already taken on 5 September 1942 from her residence and carried off to Westerbork and on 7 September deported from there to Auschwitz. On arrival there on 10 September 1942 she has been killed immediately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources include the City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration card of Abraham Cohen (1874); the City Archive of Amsterdam, archive card of Alijda van Beek; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Alijda Cohen-van Beek, Flora Levi-Cohen and Felix Levi and various additions of visitors of the website.