Isidoor van Daelen, dealer in oils and greases, born 1 June 1889 in Vlaardingen, was a son of Simon van Daelen and Adriana van Stroom. He married in Rotterdam on 11 February 1915 Clasina van Wessel from Maassluis, who was born in 1891 as daughter of Simon van Wessel and Heintje Katan. The couple had two children, namely Simon in 1916 and Henny Henriëtte in 1919.
After their wedding, Isidoor and Clasina lived at Vijverhof 121a in Rotterdam and 11 April 1922 the family moved to Diergaardesingen 4b. The last known address of the Isidoor van Daelen family was Van Mojalenlaan 12 in Den Haag.
Isidoor van Daelen has managed to have himself placed on the so-called “Weinreblist” ¹); he was told that through this deportation could be postponed. Nevertheless, on 12 December 1943 he was taken from Den Haag and deported to Westerbork. Also his wife Clasina van Wessel and his daughter Henny Henriëtte arrived that date in Westerbork. They all stayed in barrack 67. On 20 January Isidoor was hospitalized but three weeks later, on 6 February 1943 discharged there again.
The Jewisch Council archive card of Henny Henriëtte van Daelen states that previously she did domestic work but per 15 June 1942, she was working as a nurse in the Israëlitic Hospital in Rotterdam, without being exempted from deportation. Of her brother Simon, who worked as a sales representative, no archive card was found in the archives of the Jewish Council. However, on the card of his father an annotation was made that “the children had worked in the Rotterdam Hospital”.
Assuming that Simon van Daelen too was put on transport together with his parents and sister, which was on 23 February 1943, all members of the Van Daelen family arrived in Auschwitz 26 February 1943. Isidoor van Daelen, his wife Clasina van Wessel and his daughter Henny Henriëtte were immediately killed then. Based on the date of death of Simon van Daelen of 30 April 1943 may be assumed that on arrival in Auschwitz on 26 February 1943 he has been selected for “work”, whereby he lost his life two months later on 30 April 1943.
City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration card of Isidoor van Daelen; website wiewaswie.nl/wedding Isidoor van Daelen; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Isidoor van daelen, Clasina van Daelen-van Wessel and Henny Henriëtte van Daelen. Certificates of Death from Den Haag dated 23 Aug 1948: A1643 for Isidoor van Daelen; A1644 for Clasina van Daelen-van Wessel and A 1172 dated 23 June 1952 for Henny Henriëtte and Simon van Daelen.
¹) Weinreblist. During the Second World War, Weinreb played a controversial role in The Hague. He set up a fictional emigration agency and created a non-existent German general with whom he said he corresponded. Jews who registered with him - against payment - he mirrored that they could postpone their deportation. Oddly, the German occupiers at least partially cooperated with Weinrebs' initiative: the persons on his lists were provisionally exempted from deportation via the Jewish Council.
Even after the failure of this system, when it appeared that several persons protected by the Weinreb list had been arrested, he continued; he later justified this by pointing out that he at least offered the mostly unwilling victims of the persecution of the Jews any view, and that many of them detached from their passive attitude.
Weinreb was arrested on 11 September 1942. He was transferred to Huize Windekind the next day, where he was interrogated by the Fritz Koch SD. Weinreb would have succeeded in saving himself by keeping the Germans dangling with his fabricated general. When they started to see it through early 1944, he went into hiding.