Elizabeth Knap was a daughter of Marcus Knap and Debora van Emrik. She was born as the 4th child into a family with fourteen children, of whom one daughter has died in childhood, only 5 months old; five children have died already before the war; two daughthers have survived the Holocaust and six children, among them Elizabeth, Meijer Filip, Simon, Sara, Benjamin and Rebecca have been killed in the Shoah.
Elizabeth Knap married in Rotterdam on 30 December 1897 Alexander Rappoport from Hasenpoth (Russia), a chicken merchant/poulterer by trade, a son of Leib Rappoport and Johanna Tamburer. After their wedding, Elizabeth and Alexeander stayed in Rotterdam till early October 1906 but have been debited the 8th of that month from the Peoples Registry of Rotterdam as they moved to Capellen in Belgium.
On 13 September 1911 a son of Elizabeth and Alexander was born in Antwerp: Leopold Joseph. It appeared from the Dossier of Foreigners of the City of Antwerp, no 74031 that he stayed 16 October 1935 at the address Simonsstraat 24 in Antwerp, and that he has applied for a "certificate of good conduct" to the city police, in order to obtain work" which was granted to him two days later. Leopold Rappoport was a diamond cleaver by trade.
Until now it is further known, that he has been deported on 24 October 1942 from Mechelen to Auschwitz with Convoy XIV (14) as prisoner 821. This convoy arrived in Auschwitz on 26 October and it is also known that more than half of the male deportees were not sent immediately to the gas-chambers but have been registered in Auschwitz. Presumably, Leopold Joseph belonged to that group on the 26th of October, then aged 31 years and has been forced to work as a slave labourer but it is unknown were and/or whether Leopold Joseph would have been killed or that he possibly belonged to the group only 15 persons from the 14th Convoy who have survived Auschwitz.
In February 1912 the Rappoport family arrived again in Rotterdam, where they resided at Bokelstraat 29b. However, her husband Alexander passed away on 10 July 1912 in Rotterdam and one year later, on 10 June 1913, Elizabeth and her son Leopold moved again to Antwerp and stayed at Vestingstraat 40, where she acted as boardinghouse keeper, renting out rooms in order to earn a living for her son and her self. For renting out rooms in Antwerp, she also advertised in the newspaper “Rotterdams Nieuwsblad”
On 30 November 1920, the widowed Elizabeth Knap remarried in Antwerp to the widower of Naatje Salomon, the 59-year old Jacob Stodel, diamond worker, a son of Wolf Stodel and Aaltje Springer. However, Jacob Stodel passed away in Antwerp on 2 June 1938, where upon Elizabeth returned to Rotterdam on 1 August 1941 at the address Persijnstraat 1a
On 10 April 1943, Elizabeth Stodel-Knap has been registered in transit camp Westerbork, where she had to stay in barack 72. On 20 April she was deported to Sobibor, where she has been killed immediately upon arrival there on 23 April 1943.
City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration cards of Marcus Knap and Elizabeth Knap; website www.wiewaswie.nl; Dossier of Foreigners of the City of Antwerp, no’s 69695 and 74031 images 6-22; Wedding Certificate 4808 of 30-11-1920 of the City of Antwerp; The Memorial of the deportation of the Belgian Jews, pages 29 and 431; the File Cabinet of the Jewish Council of Amsterdam, record of Elisabeth Stodel-Knep (wrong spelling); certificate of death Rotterdam 1950 v1---080 and an addition of a visitor of the website.