Abraham de Wit was a son of Levie de Wit and Grietje de Roode. He was a merchant by profession and got engaged to Veronica Kaufman on 17 Juli 1938, a daughter of Samuel Kaufman and Jetje Meijer. Then some time later, Abraham and Veronica married in Rotterdam and on 17 February 1941, their daughter Grietje was born in Gouda.
When Abraham, his parents and sibs had returned from Scheveningen in Rotterdam, probably in the mid 1930s, they lived at Oranjeboomstraat 89a. At the time of the mandatory registration of all Jews in the Netherland, Abraham de Wit was already widowed. His wife Veronica Kaufman passed away in the Israëlitic Hospital at the Schietbaanlaan in Rotterdam on 19 June 1941 and was interred in the Jewish Cemetery Toepad.
Their baby Grietje, then just 4 months old, was already accommodated with granddad and grandma Kaufman, who lived during the war at the Beukelsweg 39a. Samuel Kaufman and his granddaughter Grietje de Wit however were already taken and carried off to Westerbork between 3 and 5 October 1942. Grandma Jetje Kaufman-Meijer followed only on 13 October, but on 16 October, the three of them were put on transport to Auschwitz. On arrival there on 19 October 1942, the 1 ½ old Grietje de Wit and her grandmother Jetje Kaufman-Meijer were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Birkenau.
Granddad Samuel Kaufman however was forced to leave the train during a stop at Kozel, located ±80 km west from Auschwitz and ended up eventually in the steelworks at Malpana in Silesia in Poland, where he had “to work” as a forced labourer for more than one year, before he lost his life there due to hardship and/or diseases. He was interred in a mass grave at the Roman Catholic Cemetery in the nearby village of Szczedrzyk.
On 4 August 1942, Abraham de Wit was registered in Westerbork and already on 7 August deported to Auschwitz. Upon arrival there, ± 10 August 1942, he was put to work in the camp as a forced labourer, where he had “to work” under inhumane conditions. From recent possibilities to have digital access to the so-called “Sterbebücher” of Auschwitz” (death registers), it appeared that Abraham de Wit was already murdered there on 4 September 1942.
After the war, when the above was not yet known, it was established by the Dutch authorities on the basis of survivors' testimonies that Abraham de Wit could no longer be alive after 30 September 1942. The Municipality of Rotterdam was then commissioned to draw up a death certificate in which it was established that Abraham de Wit officially had died on 30 September 1942 in Auschwitz.
Sources include the City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration cards of Levie de Wit and Samuel Kaufman; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Abraham de Wit, Grietje de Wit, Samuel Kaufman and Jetje Kaufman-Meijer; death certificates made out in Rotterdam for Abraham de Wit, nr. 2520 dated 27 July 1950 and for Veronica de Wit-Kaufman nr. 3021 dated 23 June 1941 and the website joodserfgoedrotterdam.nl/Beukelsweg 39a.