Saartje van Meer, who was born in Den Haag on 4 October 1877, ws a daughter of the soap boiler Samuel van Meer and Hanna (or Johanna) van Baaren. She married the beef butcher Izaak van Tijn on 30 October 1901 in Den Haag, who was a son of Alexander van Tijn and Matje de Vries. Izaak was born on 3 June 1870 in Sliedrecht and resided in Driel.
The Van Tijn couple had four children of whom three were born in Den Haag, viz. Alexander on 19 August 1902, then Samuel on 22 December 1903 followed by Louis on 25 August 1905. The 4th child Joël was born in Utrecht on 25 January 1908.
At the time of his marriage in 1901, Izaak was a beef butcher by trade, which he still was in 1902 when his son Alexander was born. In 1903, Izaak appeared to be listed in the birth certificate of his son Samuel as a commercial traveller and a few years later, in 1905 he was just mentioned as “worker” in the birth certificate of his son Louis, and when Joël was born in Utrecht, then Izaak was a concierge.
Two months after the birth of their son Louis on 14 October 1905, the Van Tijn family moved to Magdalenastraat 1 in Utrecht, where Izaak became the doorkeeper of the Israelitic Orphanage. Early 1930, the family returned to Amsterdam, lived at Kuipersstraat26 and Holendrechtstraat 35 but in July 1934, the family went to Hilversum where it moved into a house at Kapteynstraat 107.
Information from the Amsterdam population register shows that Izaak van Tijn subsequently had to support his family on the basis of a benefit under the Invalidity Act. He passed away already before the war on 13 March 1936 in Hilversum and has been interred there too, His wife Saartje however was murdered in Auschwitz on 14 January 1943.
Their son Joël was admitted several times as a patient to the psychiatric institution “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch”. Meantime, he lived in Utrecht at Oude Gracht 411. At the beginning of October 1943 he was arrested in Utrecht and taken to Westerbork. From there he was deported to Auschwitz on 19 October and after heavy forced labor elsewhere in Poland (in the destroyed Warsaw ghetto or perhaps in the coal mines of Jawischowitz) he was registered in the Utrecht Civil Registry as deceased on 31 March 1944.
Louis van Tijn lived in Utrecht till 14 November 1927 but left for Leeuwarden to be married on 21 June 1932 with Rachel Lubinski. After the wedding was concluded, the couple left for Huizum, a quarter in the former district of Leeuwarderadeel, today Leeuwarden. The couple had two children however the entire family was murdered during the Shoah: Louis at the end of November at Dorohucza and his wife and children already on 14 May 1943 in Sobibor.
Alexander was the eldest of the four children of Saartje and Izaak and eventually lived in Utrecht again. He was unmarried but had a child out of wedlock, which survived the Holocaust as a non-Jewish child. (addition of a visitor of the website). Alexander was killed in Sobibor on 7 May 1943.
Since Saartje’s husband had died on 13 March 1936 in Hilversum, she moved there to Galvanistraat 2 and at the end of July 1940 she left for to Amsterdam, where she moved into a house at Blasiusstraat 41 3rd floor.
On 10 December 1942, Saartje van Meer was arrested and taken to Westerbork, where she was housed in barrack 68. Her son Louis, who lived in Leiden, was ”gesperrt because of function” as he was administrator of the Jewish Funeral Service from 1 February 1940. When his mother was deported to Westerbork, he has made efforts to safeguard her from deportation or to obtain at least an exemption for her. However, the message written on her Jewish Council card on 10 January 1943 read: "can do nothing".
The next day already, on 11 January 1943, Saartje van Tijn-van Meer was put on transport to Auschwitz. Upon arrival there on 14 January 1943 she was immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
At the time, communication between Westerbork and other agencies often took several days for messages to arrive at their destination. Even after Saartje van Tijn-van Meer had already been deported on 11 January 1943 and was murdered in Auschwitz on 14 January, attempts were made on 13 January 1943 to get her placed on the so-called V-list – the (Palestine) veterans list. It was not until 18 January that it became known and stated on her Jewish Council card that she had been already deported on 11 January.
Sources include the Municipal Archive of Den Haag, wedding certificate Izaak van Tijn x Saartje van Meer; the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Izaak van Tijn and the archive card of Saartje van Meer; the Utrecht Archive/ Peoples Registry/ Magdalenastraat 1; the Noord Holland archive/death certificate 152 made out in Hilversum for Izaak van Tijn; website stenenarchief.nl/grave Izaak van Tijn; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Saartje van Meer and additions of visitors of the website.