Zoutmanstraat 39

The couple Hermann (50) and Helene (51) Mayer-Freudenberg lived here with their daughters Bertha (Beppie) (21) and Margaretha (18). Hermann and Helene lived here for two years, Beppie and Margaretha lived here for a year and four months.
Father Hermann worked in the furrier's trade and, through his marriage to the wealthy heiress Helene Freudenberg, got a leading position in the leading Berlin fashion house 'Herrmann Gerson'. The couple lived in a beautiful country house and had a special art collection. In 1935 the family fled to The Hague. Hermann went to work at Maison de Bonneterie, a posh family business with Jewish management and many Jewish employees, many of whom were murdered.
On March 5, 1941, Hermann and Helene came to live in Gouda with their daughters. They had to leave the coastal region as foreign refugees. On a beautiful group photo by Tom Verwaijen you see daughter Beppie second from the left at the Reeuwijkse Plassen together with some other Jewish young people. In mid-July 1942 she and Margaretha tried to flee to neutral Switzerland. Unfortunately, they were caught and deported to Auschwitz via the French transit camp of Drancy. Immediately upon arrival, they were murdered there on September 3, 1942.
Father Hermann and mother Helene had to go on without hearing anything from them. The following year, on April 9, 1943, they were arrested in the great April raid. About a hundred people were arrested, including the residents of the Jewish retirement home on the Oosthaven. From Gouda, all those Jewish Gouwenaars had to take a long train via Rotterdam to Westerbork. Here they were detained the next day, but Hermann and Helene were released three days later. Perhaps because of their relationship with Maison de Bonneterie or because of Helene's background.
After being released, they moved to Amsterdam at the end of April, the mandatory gathering place for the Jews in the Netherlands who had not yet been deported. Their relative freedom did not last long. At the end of December 1943 they were imprisoned again in Westerbork.
In mid-March 1944 they had to take the train to Bergen-Belsen. They spent a year in this overcrowded concentration camp with the sick and the dead. Hermann died there in March 1945 of typhoid fever. On April 10, 1945, Helene had to go on the last of three trains to transport hostages from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt. This 'Lost Train' left five days before the Nazis handed over Bergen-Belsen to the British army.
The 'Lost Train' wandered around a narrow corridor for 13 days in search of parts of Germany not yet occupied by the Allies. The transport came to a halt in Tröbitz. On April 23, the Red Army found the train and freed the living. Of the 2,400 people on the train, 200 had succumbed. In the weeks that followed, another 320 people died, mostly from typhoid fever. Helene Mayer-Freudenberg died in the hospital in Riesa on May 21, 1945.

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