Helena Roza van Geldere was a daughter of Barend van Geldere and Sara Schielaar. She was born on 8 May 1902 in Rotterdam. Helena was the youngest of the three children who were born in this family: the eldest however, Sophia Roelofina died already at the age of 3 years on 25 April 1901. Her sister Elizabeth, who was born in 1900, married Jacob Meijers but both were murdered in Auschwitz on 15 December 1942.
Helena’s father passed already in 1931, but her mother Sara Schielaar, who had moved after the passing of her husband to the Cornelis van der Lijnstraat 6 in Den Haag, was murdered during the Shoah in 1942 in Auschwitz. Her parents-in-law had passed already in the 1930s in Den Haag.
When her parents moved from Rotterdam to Den Haag on 22 May 1925, Helena Roza and her sister came too; they then came living in the Molenstraat 12-14, a narrow shopping street in the old town where father Barend van Geldere had his furniture shop. On 28 August 1928 Helena Roza married Mozes David van der Stam (Maurits) but they remained living in Den Haag. Mozes David van der Stam was a son of Meijer van der Stam and Jetje Polak. Helena and Mozes David had two children together: Max in 1930 and Bernard in 1935.
At the time of the compulsory registration of all Jews in the Netherlands, Mozes David van der Stam and his family were registered in Den Haag in April 1942 at the De Moucheronstraat 47, a side street of the Bezuidenhoutseweg, located opposite the Haagse Bos. From their registration cards from the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, it looked like the family had already a so-called “Zurückstellung” (deferment) from deportation on 16 August 1942, possibly because Mozes David van der Stam, as a butcher and wholesaler in meat, worked in the food supply on behalf of the Jewish Council.
Still, all members of the family were taken early October 1942 and carried off to Westerbork, were they have arrived somewhere between 3 and 5 October 1942. In that period, large scale raids werd organized by the German occupiers and at the same time, the Jewish labor camps were liquidated by the Germans, which caused a large influx of people to be deported and chaotic conditions in Camp Westerbork.
On 7 October a note was made on the registration card of Mozes van der Stam, which had to show that “the wife had a “Sperrung “ (exemption) for the entire family”. This had to be verified and on 19 October another note shows that confirmation was pending. Nevertheless, it all has led to nothing and on 2 November 1942 all members of the Van der Stam family were deported to Auschwitz.
The transport of 2 November 1942 was a so-called “Kozel transport”; the deportation train stopped at Kozel, which is located ±80 km west from Auschwitz and were 260 boys and men between 15 and 50 years of age were forced to leave the train. They were deployed as forced labourers in the surrounding labour camps of Upper Silesia. But those, who remained in the train, were transported onwards to Auschwitz to be killed there and upon arrival there on 5 November 1942, Helena Roza van der Stam-van Geldere and both her sons Max and Bernard van der Stam were immediately gassed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Most likely, Mozes David van der Stam was part of the group of 260 men who had to leave the train at Kozel. He then was 39 years of age and eventually ended up in the Aussenkommando (extern command) of Gleiwitz, where he has lost his life by hardship, diseases and/or mistreatment. The exact date of his death is unknown and after the war, the Dutch Ministry of Justice commissioned the Municpality of Den Haag, to draw up a certificate of death for Mozes David van der Stam, in which has been established that he has died in Gleiwitz-Germany on 28 February 1943.
Sources include the City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration card of Barend van Geldere; Municipal Archive of Den Haag, family registration card of Meijer van der Stam; the Civil Registry of Den Haag-wedding Van der Stam-Van Geldere; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Mozes David van der Stam, Helena Roza van der Stam-van Geldere and Max and Bernard van der Stam; death certificate C495 of 29 May 1952, made out in Den Haag for Mozes David van der Stam and the Wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl.