Rachel Cohen Rodrigues was the eldest of the three children of Mietje Berlijn and Simson Cohen Rodrigues. She was born in Amsterdam on 24 September 1924 and became later a cloak stitcher by trade. She had other little siblings: Alida and Josua, who were born respectively on 8 May 1930 and on 19May 1932.
Her parents were divorced in June 1938, after which her mother and her three children moved into living accommodation at Batavierstraayt 17 1st floor. Her father then moved in with Lena van Kreeveld at Retiefstraat 71 3rd floor in Amsterdam-East. On 3 July 1940 he married her and in 1943 still a baby was born, named Simon Monny Cohen Rodrigues.
Also Rachel’s mother remarried, but to the non-Jewish Johannes Cornelis Craemers. Before the marriage was concluded on 3 April 1940 , a daughter was already born in 1939 named Jennie. It is most likely that because of Mietje’s mixed marriage, she and both her children Alida and Josua from her first marriage have survived the Holocaust.
Only Rachel Cohen Rodrigues became victim during the Holocaust. She was put on transport on 7 August 1943 from Westerbork to concentration camp Vught, where she stayed until 15 November. Presumably she has been put to work there as a cloak stitcher too, her actual trade.
On 15 November a direct deportation transport to Auschwitz departed from Vught, which included the then 21-year old Rachel Cohen Rodrigues. The transport arrived in Auschwitz on 18 November 1943, after which all deportees were quarantined for six weeks, followed by two more large selections in January 1944.
Based on statements from post-war witnesses after the war, it has become apparent that a large number of women have died of typhus, dysentery and other diseases already during the “quarantine” in the first weeks after arrival in Auschwitz. The exact date in January 1944, on which the children, and the women who had children with them, were selected for the gas chambers, could not be determined.
Furthermore, it appeared from unanimous statements, that only five women known by name survived the January 1944 selections. It must therefore be concluded that all other women, as well as the children, had died no later than 31 January 1944, as a result of illness, exhaustion, gassing or otherwise.
Partly on the basis of the above. The Dutch Authorities after the war commissioned the Municipality of Amsterdam to draw up a death certificate for Rachel Cohen Rodrigues, which states that she died in (the vicinity of) Auschwitz on 31 January 1944.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Simson Cohen Rodrigues, archive card of Mietje Berlijn and of Rachel and Alida Cohen Rodrigues and of the still not public archive card of Josua Cohen Rodrigues; the file cabinetof the Jewish Council, registration cards of Simson Cohen Rodrigues and Rachel Cohen Rodrigues; website ITS Arolson/victim list with Rachel Cohen Rodrigues; the Dutch Red Cross publication “Auschwitz”partl 4/ Deportation transports in 1943, edited October 1953 and the death certificate no. 541 dated 17 August 1951 from the A-register 83-folio 92, made out for Rachel Cohen Rodrigues by the Municipality of Amsterdam.