Biography

About Josua and Rebecca Blom

Josua (Jozua) Blom was a son of the 1st marriage of Marcus Jacob Blom and Rozette de Vries.  On 19 November 1900 he married in Amsterdam his cousin (1st degree) Rebecca Blom, a daughter of Machiel Blom and Bertina van Gelderen.  The couple had two children, Rozette and Bertina.

The eldest daughter of Josua and Rebecca, Rozette Blom married 18 August 1920 Elkan Leo Boutelje and had two children with him. On 14 September 1938 the marriage ended in a divorce. Rozette and both her children have survived the Holocaust but the father of her children lost his life somewhere in Mid Europe on 31 August 1943.

Their youngest daughter Bertina, married 16 February 1927 in Amsterdam Jacques Harschel from Utrecht, a son of Meijer Nathan Harschel and Clara Clarenburg. The couple had two children, Betty and Clara Helena. Bertina, her husband and both her children have been killed in the Shoah.

On 13 April 1927 Josua and Rebecca moved from Amsterdam to Scheveningen, where they resided at Nieuwe Parklaan 130. At some point they must have moved back to Amsterdam as on the registration card of the Jewisch Council the address for Josua Blom as for his wife Rebecca too, was listed Nieuwe Hoogstraat 9 in Amsterdam. That address was for Hotel Hiegentlich, a hotel for "families and singles". In that hotel stayed also Josua's sister Sophia Salomon-Blom, who was discharged from Camp Westerbork on 24 Augustus 1942 and as single widow moved to Hotel Hiegentlich in Amsterdam, where she passed away on 19 December. Josua Blom has taken care for placing the obituary in "Het Joodsche Weekblad" (The Jewish Weekly) on 25 December 1942.

Josua Blom was sent to Camp Westerbork on 6 March 1943, together with his wife Rebecca Blom. They stayed in barack 62 until they were deported on 23 March to Sobibor and upon arrival there on 26 March 1943 immediately killed.

City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of  Josua Blom; Municipal Archive of Den Haag, family registgration card of Josua Blom; website www.wiewaswie.nl; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Josua Blom and Rebecca Blom-Blom and an addition of a visitor of the website.

 

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