The family of Barend van Cleef originally consisted of six people, namely Barend van Cleef himself, his wife Sophia Johanna van Geldere and their four children Hartog, Saul, Rozet and Sientje. Saul van Cleef was born on 12 February 1922 but died when he was only 2 years old; he passed on 4 October 1924. The youngest daughter Sientje van Cleef was born on 18 April 1926, but she also died at a young age; she was only 11 years old and died on 1 March 1938. Their two surviving children were Hartog (13 December 1919) and Rozet (18 April 1924).
Barend van Cleef, a son of Hartog van Cleef and Rosette Roodveld, was born on 2 November 1890 in Amsterdam and supported his family as a bread deliverer and a shopkeeper in pickles. His wife, Johanna Sophia van Geldere, a daughter of Saul van Geldere and Sientje Fransman, was born on 16 September 1892 in Doesburg and their marriage was concluded on 19 February 1919 in Amsterdam.
After Barend and Sophia Johanna got married in February 1919, they started in the Valkenburgerstraat 9 3rd floor-front with the Kropveld family. But after only a week they left there to move into a house on 27 February 1919 at Snoekjesgracht 11 3rd floor, where Barend's unmarried sister-in-law Engelina van Geldere also came to live in from 22 October 1920 to 21 September 1921. From 14 February 1928 the Van Cleef family lived at Vrolikstraat 299 ground floor in Amsterdam-East and from the end of September 1936 they lived at house number 94 ground floor in the same street.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, up from 10 January 1941 all Jews were obliged to register with the local Population Registers. This measure can only be seen as the foundation of the deportation of the Dutch Jews. A registration card was made for every Jewish person, but for Barend van Cleef and his wife Sophia Johanna van Geldere, there appeared to be no registration cards in the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, but only for their children Hartog and his sister Rozet.
But from the registration card of Barend's daughter Rozet van Cleef it can be established that Barend, as a shopkeeper in pickles, received a so-called exemption from deportation on account of "Joodsch Lokaal" on 10 July 1942 on the basis of an application to have his shop designated as a Joods Lokaal (Lok -A and/or Lok-Z), where only Jews were then allowed to buy. This meant that his family - which then consisted of Barend himself, his wife Sophia Johanna and his daughter Rozet (his son Hartog was in a Jewish labor camp) - was provisionally "set back" from the so-called "Arbeitseinsatz", the provision of additional work in Germany.
The registration card of Rozet van Cleef made it clear that she, and almost certainly both her parents too, were summoned on 11 November 1942 to report in Westerbork. On 16 November they were deported then from Westerbork to Auschwitz, with more than 750 other deportees and on arrival there on 19 November 1942, Barend van Cleef, Sophia Johanna van Cleef-van Geldere and Rozet van Cleef were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources include the Amsterdam City Archives, family registration cards of Barend van Cleef and of Engelina van Geldere; archive cards of Barend van Cleef, Sophia Johanna van Geldere, Hartog van Cleef and Rozet van Cleef; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Rozet van Cleef; the Amsterdam death certificates no. 430, 431 and 439 for Barend van Cleef, Sophia Johanna van Cleef-van Geldere and Rozet van Cleef, respectively from the death registers A64-73v and A64-75; the wikipedia website Jodentransporten uit Nederland.nl and the Publication "Probably on transport", pages 42 and 43 by Raymund Schütz.