Why I commemorate
The Silberstein family and the holocaust
“Commemorating hurts. What surrounds me violently: the past. Fallen victim.
“Oh, now I understand.”
(Armando, Aantekeningen over de vijand, 1981)
My Jewish great-great-grandparents Abraham Silberstein and Sophia Lewin (also: Levin / Levy) left Kaunas in Lithuania around the year 1870. Lithuania was Russian territory and Kaunas was known as Kowno. They eventually settled in Rotterdam after several years wandering in Germany. In Germany and Rotterdam they would have five children, three sons and two daughters. Their firstborn son Seelig was born in Osnabrück, Two sons, Moses and Jakob, were born in Hannover, Germany. Jakob and Seelig died in 1906 and 1918 respectively.
In 1907 my grandmother Sophia (Fie) Overdijk-Thoonsen was the first grandchild of Abraham and Sophia. As a ‘voorkind’, an illegitimate child — because her mother married in 1908 — Fie grew up in the home of her Jewish grandparents.
Sophia Lewin’s first son, Seelig Lewin, was born in Osnabrück in 1875. He married in Amsterdam the equally Jewish Christina Vischjager, but divorced her in 1904 in Rotterdam. He then temporarily lived in Zutphen, in the De Hoven quarter, but returned to Rotterdam where he died in 1918, the same year as his father, Abraham Silberstein. Sophia followed Abraham in 1930. They had no money and after ritual washing and dressing were laid to rest in an unnamed grave at the Jewish cemetery at the Toepad, Rotterdam. Headstones only followed in 2017.
However, many of my Jewish family members would never get a decent grave, let alone a headstone. Christina remarried twice after the separation of Seelig. She was deported in 1943 by the Nazis from Judendurchgangslager Westerbork in Drenthe and gassed and cremated in Sobibor, Eastern Poland. Her two brothers, her sister, her son and almost the whole family of her then-husband Jacob de Hond were also murdered in Auschwitz and Sobibor.
Moses Hermann Silberstein, the second son of Abraham and Sophia, had two sons from his marriage to Siena van Gelder, who died in 1941 in Rotterdam. They lived Wiekstraat 15. Moses was deported and killed on 15 October 1942 in Auschwitz. Records in The Dutch National Archives show that this house was sold the very same day as his arrival and subsequent gassing in Auschwitz. His eldest son Jacob (Jaap) Silberstein married the non-Jewish Wilhelmina Maria Cornelissen on 7 May 1941 in The Hague. According to the card system of the Jewish Council he lived with his father in the Wiekstraat. The identity card of his wife mentions the same address. Jacob Silberstein arrived in Westerbork between 3 and 5 October 1942. From there, he was put on transport on 16 October 1942. He died in an unknown place at the age of thirty-three. His date of death was established on 30 June 1943. Israel Silberstein, the other son of Moses, was gassed in Auschwitz on 30 September 1942. Israel was thirty years old and married to Rika Cohen. Rika herself was also murdered on 30 September, as was her sister Roosje. Her two brothers were later gassed in Sobibor. Both her parents were murdered in Auschwitz on the same day as her father-in-law Moses. Ellen van der Spiegel / Elsje Cohen, the daughter of Salomon Cohen and a brother of Rika, survived alone, because she could go into hiding (‘onderduiken’) at the home of a teacher from Rotterdam’s Marnix Gymnasium. Her parents, who lived on the Schieweg in Rotterdam, were murdered in 1943 in Sobibor.
Paulina van Geens-Silberstein was the second daughter of Abraham and Sophia. She became pregnant, married in 1918 the Jewish Amsterdam merchant Hartog van Geens. They lived in Rotterdam for a long time. Their first child, Margaretha, was hit by a car and died in 1928 at the age of nine. When the German bombardment of Rotterdam left them homeless, they moved to the Schilderswijk in The Hague, to the Van Ravesteinstraat. Hartog and his son Jonas were put to work in a internment camp. The Van Geens family was — also — killed on 15 October 1942 in Auschwitz. Together with their youngest son Levie, only thirteen years old. Son Jonas, twenty years old had his death recorded in the socalled Sterbebücher on November 3d, only some weeks later. Their eldest son, Abraham (Bram), was the only one who managed to escape that gruesome fate by going into hiding and eventually become a resistance fighter in Haarlem alongside Hannie Schaft. He took his brother and sister with him to Haarlem, but their mother ordered them back.
On 25 May 1943, at the age of seventeen, their daughter Sophia (“Fietje”) van Geens was transported via Kamp Vught from Westerbork via Nieuweschans by Dutch and German railway companies in cattle wagons with 2858 other unfortunates to eastern Poland. She was gassed and burned in Sobibor on 28 May 1943. She came to say goodbye to my mother Johanna Catharina (Joke/Jopie), her little niece. My mother was only eight years old, but never forgot. From Westerbork, only one day for her transport to Sobibor, Sophia managed to send a postcard to a schoolfriend living on Walenburgerweg 38, Rotterdam:
“Where we are going we don ‘t know, though we are still like always optimistic en won’t lose heart, despite everything. Because really, we will return soon with the whole family.”
Given the dates of deportation, most Rotterdam family members must have been picked up by Rotterdam police and taken from Hangar 24 (Loods 24) by the Nederlandse Spoorwegen to Westerbork, awaiting their last horrible journey and end in Auschwitz or Sobibor.
My great-grandmother Gusta Thoonsen-Silberstein was the first daughter of Jewish immigrants Abraham and Sophie. And their first child born in Rotterdam, in 1886. Gusta would eventually be spared for deportation and murder, just like her own children and grandchildren, including my mother. From the archives and literature, however, we know how anxious and insecure the grace of ‘mixed marriages’ was to the end: she managed to “de-star” (Dutch: ontsterren) herself in late 1943. .
Dutch resistance carried out a bomb attack on the Ceintuurbaan railway in Rotterdam. On November 28, 1944, the Germans executed twelve people on the ‘s Gravenweg and Nieuwe Terbregseweg in Rotterdam as a reprisal measure. Including Gusta’s thirty-two-year-old son-in-law Hein Ruijbroek. He was the husband of Paulina Johanna Thoonsen since 1933. She was ‘aunt Paula’ to my mother and to my mother’s sister Sophia Volkers van Zandwijk. They were also neighbours in the Zoomstraat. My mother, as a nine-year-old child, saw her uncle’s blood soaked shirt shirt being washed by her mother.
It is seventy-six years ago this year that my family members were deported, gassed and burned. They were murdered, they disappeared and by absence of evidence were officially declared dead only in 1950. My family fell victim to a carefully organized mass murder, made possible by equally carefully recorded data on their origin and religion and supported by loyal Dutch government officials.
“The exact combination of ideology and circumstances of the year 1941 will not appear again, but something like it might. Part of the effort to understand the past is thus the effort needed to understand ourselves. The Holocaust is not only history, but warning. “(Timothy Snyder, Black Earth, 2015)
Seventy-six years. They say it is a long time ago.
My mother, Johanna Catharina (Joke) van Zandwijk, grandchild of Gusta Silberstein, great-grandchild of Sophia Levin, passed away May 4, 2016.
