Biography

About Bloeme Kesner-Polak and her family.

Bloeme Polak, born in Leeuwarden 7 December 1861, was a daughter of Jacob Kalmers Polak and Froukje de Leeuw. She married 31 Augustus 1887 in Amsterdam Joseph Kesner, butcher by profession, born 2 July 1866 as son ofn Salomon Kesner and Sophia Goudsmit. The couple had three children, namely Salomon, Jacob and Isaac. The latter was also knwon as Isidoor Kesner.

Her son Salomon Kesner and his wife Maria Poppelsdorf were killed during the Shoah in Auschwitz.

Her other son Jacob has survived the Holocaust. He was married in 1913 in Antwerp to Alida Swalf, who passed away there on 4 December 1934. Jacob married again in 1935 to Cornelia Elisabeth Goedhart. Both died after the war in the years of 1950.

The youngest son Isaac lived in Den Haag with his wife Marianne Meijer. Isaac died however in Rotterdam as Isidor Kesner on 31 March 1943 and Marianna Kesner-Meijer passed in Den Haag on 6 June 1942.

Bloeme's spouse Joseph Kesner died already on 24 April 1915 in Amsterdam but was interred in the Jewish Cemetery of Putte.  

According the Peoples Registery of Den Haag was the address of Bloeme in April 1942 Harstenhoekweg 78 in Scheveingen, where she then lived in with her son Salomon Kesner and his wife Maria Poppelsdorf. However on 10 April 1943 Bloeme was carried off from there to Westerbork and on 20 April deported to Sobibor and on arrival there on 23 April 1943 immediately killed.

Sources among others: Municipal Archive of Den Haag, family registration card of Joseph Kesner and Bloeme Polak; certificate of death made out in Den Haag for Marianne Kesner-Meijer, nr. 1442 dated 8 June 1942; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Bloeme Kesner-Polak and additions by Dirkje Bobbe; City Archive of Rotterdam, certificate of death for Isidoor (Isaac) Kesner, register A - folio 149v - certificate no. 1781.