Verhaal

Bertha Meijer in Amsterdam

Door: Ruijs

Bertha arrived as the last of the three in Amsterdam on 23rd of May 1939, coming from Aachen. She became a house-maid in the house of the family of Bernard Sloog in the Jekerstraat 77 II (second floor). Bernard Sloog was a Dutch Jew who came from Haarlem and worked as an agent for a pottery-factory. With his wife Clara Nink they had 1 son Louis.

After less than a month Bertha went to the family Jacobs who lived at the Catharina van Clevelaan 9 in (now) Amstelveen, a suburb from Amsterdam to return two months later to the Sloog-family.

On October 10th 1940 she moves to the Jozef Israelskade 94 I (first floor), living with a single German non-Jewish seamstress called Maria Rienartz. And on Februari 3rd 1942 Bertha moves to the Oranje Nassaulaan 6 (?). There is no trace of her on that address.

Bernard Sloog died on March 30th in Westerbork. His ashes are buried in the Jewish graveyard in Diemen, not far from Amsterdam. His wife Clara Nink died in Sobibor (May 7th 1943) and their son Louis in Auschwitz (September 30 1942).

The Jekerstraat where Bertha lived with the Sloog-family is part of a district of Amsterdam called the Riversdistrict because the streets where named after Dutch rivers. This district was a known for its huge population of German Jews (refugees) before the war. I read somewhere that in this district lived then 17.000 German Jews. One of them was Anne Frank, who lived just around the corner of the Jekerstraat !

Bertha died on 5th of Octobre 1942 in Auschwitz.