Verhaal

Just a photo in the family album

Lost and found

Isaie Salomon Luigi Davids was called Louis and was born in Amsterdam on 13 February 1916. It is unknown whether he has known his father, since his parents were not officially married. His mother, Christina Wijngaard was my auntie Stien, with whom I stayed when I was a little girl and whose grief has always impressed me enormously. My father, who during his studies in Amsterdam lived with auntie Stien, was Louis' cousin, but he never informed me about what had happened to Louis during the war and why auntie Stien never heard any news about her son. When I asked around in the family it turned out that nobody knew anything about Louis and that it was forbidden to speak about him when auntie Stien was around. 

Now that all contemporary relatives who might have known something about Louis have died, my cousin Ada and I started a search. We found out that Louis must have been a love child; auntie Stien never married but William Davids acknowledged being his father 2 months after his birth. When he was only 4 years old his father died and so Louis became even more precious to his mum. 

In 1941 it seems that Louis joined an illegal group named "De Geuzen", a dangerous thing to do with such a Jewish name. Mid August 1941 he married a girl named Trijntje van Cornewal, but there are no records of that marriage. Not even a month later he was arrested and sent to Amersfoort as a political prisoner. From Amersfoort he was transported to Bergen Belsen but was obviously useful to the Germans since he ended his life in Pölzen (now Poland) where the Germans had an important fuel factory. 

The sad thing is that his mother never got news of him for the rest of her life; the Red Cross was asked for information by his wife, who wished to remarry. All this information was sent to her, whereas his mother has probably never known of his marriage, let alone of her daughter in law. No children were born from this marriage. My auntie Stien died a broken woman at the age of 82.