Emanuel van West was the 11th of the 13 children of David van West and Keetje Cohen. Emanuel was born in Amsterdam on 8 August 1904, when his parents lived at Nieuwe Grachtje 8. Since then, his parents have lived at a number of different addresses in the city and in the end of October 1925 the moved to Tugelaweg 33 1st floor in Amsterdam-East. Also Emanuel, who meanwhile had become a telegram orderer, moved with them. And when Emanuel’s parents moved from Tugelaweg to Retiefstraat 63 1st floor on 8 Febuary 1927, also Emanuel, who was already married by then, moved along with them with his bride.
Emanuel married on 24 November 1926 in Amsterdam Sientje Kloot, a seamstress who was born there on 4 November 1905 as a daughter of Salomon Kloot and Sara Sluijzer. When they got married, both her parents had been deceased for some time already: her father in 1916 and her mother in 1918. Sientje was born in a large family: between 1887 and 1910, twelve children were born, of whom Sientje was the 9th.
Late October 1913, Sientje’s family left for Antwerp and Berchem; her father was a diamond polisher and earned his living there. After the passing of her father in 1916 and her mother in 1918, Sientje was temporarily placed with her then still unmarried sister Keetje Kloot, but on 9 April 1918, she was registered in the Dutch Israelitic Girls Orphanage (Nederlands Israelitisch Meisjesweeshuis) at Rapenburgerstraat 171 in Amsterdam.
She stayed there for a long time as a “patient” and she left the Orphanage only on 26 January 1925, when she was 20 years old. She then ended up with an aunt (from her future husband Emanuel van West), named Jansje van West at Topaasstraat 21 1st floor. Jansje van West (born 19 April 1867, was widowed from Jacob Pesaro and a granddaughter of Abraham Levie van West (1794) and Rachel Jacob Kloot (1797); Emanuel van West (1904) was her great-grandson) (source: Amsterdam City Archives).
On 24 September 1930 Emanuel and Sientje decided to leave Amsterdam and they moved to Rotterdam, where Emanuel came to live at Tuindersstraat 18b and Sientje at 16b. On 4 July 1931 Sientje moved from the Tuindersstraat to Diergaardesingel 57b, where she has lived in for two months but on 26 August 1931 she returned to her husband at no. 18b.
On 6 March 1935 Sientje was shortly admitted to the Central Israelitic Psychiatric Hospital “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch” and from where she could return to her husband again in Rotterdam on 30 July 1935. However, not long thereafter, on 17 March 1936, Sientje van West-Kloot was permanently admitted in “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch”.
There, Sientje fell victim to the eviction of “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch”, because on orders of the German occupiers, the town of Apeldoorn and the institution had to be made “Jew free”. In the night of 21 to 22 January 1943, 869 patients from “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch”, 94 children from “Achisomog” and 52 members of staff were put on the train by the SS and the Jewish Order Police (Ordnungspolizei) with utmost and brute force. Although 100 people from the institution managed to escape.
In the morning of 22 January 1943, the deportation train left for Auschwitz, and insorfar as the deported patients had not already died during the journey or were shot on arrival on 25 January 1943, the others were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. This was also the fate of Sientje van West-Kloot.
Sientje’s husband, Emanuel van West lived in 1935 in the Woelwijkstraat 32, which was located in the district “Het Oude Noorden” of Rotterdam. After Sientje’s admittance in Apeldoorn, he moved in 1936 to Noorderstraat, then to the Zaagmolendrift and to the Groen van Prinsterstraat, where he had found lodging. After the bombardment of Rotterdam of 14 May 1940, Emanuel found lodging on 21 May 1940 in the family of his brother-in-law Barend Hilversum, husband of Sientje’s sister Keetje Kloot, who lived already at Crooswijkseweg 60b in Rotterdam-Crooswijk since 19 March 1937.
Presumably at the beginning of October 1942, Emanuel van West was carried off from Rotterdam to Westerbork, where at that time enormous chaos reigned as a result of, among other things, the liquidation of all Jewish labor camps in the Northern Netherlands, the large-scale raids in Amsterdam, among others, and in the context of the so-called “family reunification”, the influx of the family members of the men from the labor camps.
The exact date, on which Emanuel would have been deported from Westerbork to “the East” has not been recorded in that chaos. He eventually died somewhere in Central Europe - probably in one of the forced labor camps in Upper Silesia. Based on research by the Red Cross and testimonies of survivors, the Dutch authorities established after the war that Emanuel van West died on 31 March 1944 in Mid-Europe.
On the basis of the conclusions of the investigations of the Red Cross, in which it has been established that if certain transports, unless it appears otherwise in individual cases and with due observance of the general conclusions drawn, whereby deportees are deemed to have died no later than 31 March 1944 in one of the labor camps in Silesia (Poland), then the transport date from Westerbork must have been between 16 October and 30 November 1942. (but most likely with one of the Cosel transports of October 1942).
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam:Special Registers (Bijzondere Registers)/Girls Orphanage/Sientje Kloot; birth certificate 9101- year 1904 Book 9-folio 59 for Emanuel van West; family registration cards of David van West (1863), Emanuel van West and Sientje Kloot; Residence cards Amsterdam/Tugelaweg 33 1st floor and Topaasstraat 21 1st floor with Sientje Kloot; the City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration cards of Emanuel van West x Sientje Kloot; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Emanuel van West and Sientje van West-Kloot; the archives of the Red Cross, publication “Auschwitz III” /Cosel transports, edited October 1953; certificates of death made out in Rotterdam for Emanuel van West/folio no. V016-deed no. 1953.90 and for Sientje van West-Kloot/folio no. V2-027-deed no. 1951.1069 and an addition of a visitor of the website.