Antje Jeannette van Blijdenstijn was born on 2 April 1887 in Ophemert and she was the female part of a twin. Her twin brother was Emanuël van Blijdenstijn and their parents were Hijman van Blijdenstijn and Judith Docters. Both were the “first born” of in total five children, their parents would have. They had another two sisters and one brother, namely Maria in 1890, Jeannette in 1892 and Izak in 1894, but on 17 September 1893, there has been born also a stillborn son.
Antje remained unmarried. As far as possible she worked as a housekeeper but she was hospitalized several times in mental institutions. In 1919, her sister Maria requested the District Court in Utrecht to have her sister admitted to a psychiatric hospital, after which the court granted an authorization for the period of one year on 5 November 1919.
Prior to her stay in the psychiatric institution in the municipality of Zutphen (Groot Graffel in Warnsveld), she stayed for some time in the mental hospital in Utrecht (nowadays the Willem Arntz Foundation) and on 14 May 1920 she was transferred from Zutphen to the Central Israëlitic Psychiatric Hospital “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch” in Apeldoorn. She stayed there until 16 September 1929 and then transferred again to the municipality of “Bilthoven”, probably again to the Willem Arntz Foundation.
The Peoples Registry of Ophemert showed however that she was registered again in the municipality of Ophemert in 1940 but later Antje Jeannette still moved to Arnhem where she ended up at Zijpendaalseweg 1d. From there, she was taken and carried off on 18 November 1942 to Westerbork and on 24 November deported to Auschwitz. On arrival there on 27 November 1942, Antje Jeannette van Blijdenstijn was immediately killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources include the archive of Ophemert, birth certificate of Antje Jeannette van Blijdenstijn, nr. 10; website openarchieven.nl/register of patients Zutphen/Antje Jeannette van Blijdenstijn; Coda archives Apeldoorn/Antje Jeannette van Blijdenstijn and the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Antje Jeannette van Blijdenstijn.