Benedictus Adelaar, born 12 October 1893 in Amsterdam, was a son of Emanuel Adelaar and Engeltje Kooker. He married 1 March 1917 to Rebecca Slap, a daughter of Asser Slap and Leentje Witteboon. The couple had three children, namely Engelina on 6 January 1918 and on 14 February 1922 the twinbrothers Asser and Emanuel were born.
Benedictus was a diamond polisher by trade and went living with Rebecca after they were wed at Lepelstraat 9 3rd floor in the old city centre of Amsterdam but moved 2 August 1929 to Topaasstraat 10 1st floor in Amsterdam-South. On 14 May 1930 his wife Rebecca Slap passed away; she has been interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Diemen.
On 24 Jun 1931 Benedictus Adelaar married again the five-year-younger sister of the late Rebecca, Greta Slap, with whom he had no offspring. Benedictus stayed at Topaasstraat 10 and his 2nd wife Greta moved in with the family.
Engelina Adelaar, the eldest of the three children, married 1 April 1942 Louis Bacharach. Eventually both were killed in Sobibor: Engelina on 2 April 1943 and Louis on 29 May 1943.
The twin-brothers Asser and Emanuel responded to the call for the so-called “provision of additional work in German” and reported in Westerbork on 13 July 1942. On 16th the were put on transport to Auschwitz and on arrival there, ±18 July, they were deployed as prisoned forced labourers nrs. 47892 and 47893. At some point they lost their lives there but it is unknown when, where and under what circumstances. Therefore , after the war, their date and place of death has been established as on 30 September 1942 in Auschwitz.
Benedictus Adelaar and his sister-in-law, who had become his 2nd wife in June 1931, were arrested in the night of 11-12 February 1943 and carried off to concentration camp Vught. Benedictus stayed there in barrack 41b and his wife Greta in barrack 33b.
On 8 June, both were deported from Vught via Westerbork to Sobibor; this transport was known as the so-called “children transport”. The more than 1000 children from this transport were immediately killed on arrival in Sobibor on 11 June 1943. The total of victims, which had been put on transport to Sobibor that 8th of June, among them Benedictus Adelaar and Greta Adelaar-Slap, was however 3017 deported persons, who all were killed immediately in the gas chambers of Sobibor that 11th of June 1943.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card and archive card of Benedictus Adelaar, archive cards of Engelina, Asser and Emanuel Adelaar, residence card Vechtstraat 155 Amsterdam; website wiewaswie.nl/marriages Adelaar/Slap; website hetstenenarchief.nl/grave Rebecca Adelaar-Slap; Wikipedia listing Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl and the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Benedictus Adelaar, Greta Slap and of Engelina, Asser and Emanuel Adelaar.