Henegouwerlaan 67b

Elkan Manheim was 31 years old when he married the nine years younger and also Rotterdamse Rachel Henriques (18.03.1893). They had four children.

Elkan worked at the municipality of Rotterdam and had climbed from assistant-supervisor to draftsman urban development when he designed the emblem of the RET-public transport of Rotterdam-at the age of 45. This beautiful emblem was visible from 1929 on all trams, buses, stops and ticket sales points.

In the family there were already concerns about their youngest son Salco (02.05.1925), who suffered from epilepsy and a few years later Salco even had to be placed out of the house because the care became too heavy. He died two years later at the age of 10 (28.11.1935). His twin sister Mirjam was a healthy girl.

Their older son Willem (26.10.1917) went to study architecture and was allowed to call himself an architect at the age of 22. Two years later, Willem and Mirjam received a call for the Arbeitseinsatz and both were transported to Auschwitz on 03.08.1942. Mirjam was gassed immediately after arrival. Willem was selected for work. The Auschwitz death register states that Willem died of Flegmone only four weeks after arrival at 01.09.1942 at 8.40 pm.

Sarah, Elkan and Rachel's oldest daughter (01.03.1916), married in 1938 to the Polish Frenchman Charles (Szoul) Aronowicz and settled in Paris. They managed to escape the Holocaust in time and reached New York on January 1, 1941.
When preparing their flight, Sarah and Charles wanted to try to take the family of Sarah, but Elkan and Rachel said: "We are Dutch. We have our lives here. What should we be afraid of. "

At the end of 1940, Elkan was fired at the municipality of Rotterdam and on 10.04.1943 he and Rachel were registered in Westerbork.
There they make every effort to show that they had never hung the Jewish faith and had been involved in the Christian Church for years. Their son Salco had stayed in a Christian institution and their daughter Sarah exclusively made a civil marriage.
The Christian Science Church to which they had been connected since 1934 could only issue a confirmation of it, but no baptismal certificate, because this church has no baptism. This information proved insufficient to change their situation.
In the meantime, the former manager of Elkan turned his influence to get Elkan and Rachel placed on the Barneveldlijst. The Barneveldlijst included a group of prominent Jews who were exempt from Arbeitseinsatz and deportation by the occupier.

On September 4, 1944, Elkan and Rachel left with around 700 other Jews from the Barneveldlijst in Veewagons to Theresienstadt. A month later it turned out that the names of Elkan and Rachel did not appear on the Barnveld list. Once again a train was ready and Elkan and Rachel were sent to Auschwitz on 12.10.1944, where they were killed immediately after arrival on 15.10.1944.

Elkan and Rachel could have continued their fight in Westerbork ten days longer, their story had had a different outcome, because nine days after their departure from Westerbork, on September 13, the very last train left for Bergen Belsen.

Hier erinnert

Ist hier ein Stein beschädigt oder fehlt er? Teilen Sie es uns per E-Mail mit