Biography

About Simon Knap

Simon Knap, an artist, was a son of Marcus Knap and Debora van Emrik. He was born as the 2nd 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, Sara, Benjamin, Rebecca and Simon self have been killed in the Shoah.

Simon Knap married Hendrika Wolffers in Rotterdam on 13 March 1901, a daughter of Lion Wolffers and Esther Emrik. The couple had three children, namely Debora, Esther and Willem. Except Simon and his wife Hendrika, also Willem has been killed in the Shoah. Willem is still in the summer of 1942, before he was deported to Auschwitz married in Rotterdam to Grietje Frenk.

It is known of Debora, born in May 1903 and unmarried, that she had a son, born in Rotterdam on 28 June 1926, named Simon, who she has legalized. He was under supervision of the Wellfare Board of Rotterdam but lived in with his grandparents, the Simon and Hendrika Knap family. He has been killed in Auschwitz on 30 September 1942. On 5 July 1929 Debora Knap was taken in in the psychiatric institution Maasland in Poortugaal. Until now nothing is further known of her.

Simon's daughter Esther Knap, (born in August 1906) married 26 May 1926 a non-Jewish man and had three children with him. She and her family have survived the Holocaust.

Simon Knap and his wife Hendrika Wolffers have been deported together on 12 October 1942 from transit camp Westerbork to Auschwitz where both upon arrival there on 15 October 1942 have been killed.

City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration card of Simon Knap; website www.wiewaswie.nl; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council of Amsterdam, records of Simon Knap, Hendrika Wolffers and grandon Simon Knap and an addition of a visitor of the website.