Marcus Hemelrijk was the sixth of the nine children of Jacob Barend Hemelrijk and Mala Sardiner. He was born on 2 November 1858 in Winterswijk and married on 5 October 1885 in Lüdinghausen in Prussia (Germany) to Dina Strauss, who was born on 6 December 1860 in Seppenrade (Germany) as a daughter of Abraham Strauss and Maria Magdalena Nohlen.
Marcus and Dina lived in Winterswijk, where their children were born; Mina was born there in 1886 but passed away in 1965 in Arnhem; Jacob was born in 1888 and died in 1973 in Bergen (NH); also Amalia was born there in 1889 – she passed in 1986 in Amersfoort; Martha was born in 1891 – she died in 1981 in Wageningen and Lea who was also born in Winterswijk in 1893, was the only nazi-victim: she was murdered in Auschwitz on 31 August 1942.
Dina Hemelrijk Strauss passed away one year after the birth of her last child Lea: she died on 15 June 1894 in Winterswijk. The then 35-year old widower Marcus Hemelrijk remarried in Haaksbergen on 18 September 1894 the 32-year old Heintje Frankenhuis, a daughter of Jozef Frankenhuis and Dientje de Leeuw. Marcus had with her another daughter in 1895, Dina, who was born also in Winterswijk and who passed in 1985 in Renkum.
However, Marcus got widowed for the 2nd time: his wife Heintje Frankenhuis passed away on 5 July 1934 in Arnhem, also the residence of Marcus and Heintje. She was interred in the Jewish cemetery Moscowa in Arnhem.
Marcus Hemelrijk lived at Markt 5 in Arnhem. There he was arrested by the occupiers on 18 November 1942 and carried off to Westerbork. On 24 November Marcus was deported to Auschwitz in a transport of 709 deportees. Upon arrival there, the 84-year old Marcus Hemelrijk was immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources include the website openarchieven.nl; website stenenarchief.nl; website wiewaswie.nl, the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Marcus Hemelrijk; the wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl and additions of visitors of the website.