Tulpstraat 26

Betje de Leeuw was born in Oude Pekela in 1875 and her brother Mozes Marcus in Winschoten in 1883, where 10% of the population was Jewish at the time. Mozes went to work in Amsterdam and later in The Hague and Betje also ended up in The Hague. In 1917 Moses married Irma Zelnicker. Her mother lived in Beuthen, which was then a German state on the border with Poland and only 50 kilometers from Auschwitz.
Betje married David de Leeuw from Steenwijk in 1921. Her husband had the same surname but was not related. David died in 1930. Betje tried to provide her income with a trade in coffee and tea. Because that yielded insufficient results, she received support from the Israelite Municipality of Steenwijk.
Moses' marriage was not childless. Margott was born in The Hague in 1918 and Elisabeth was born in Beuthen in 1924 where the family lived at the time. Mother Irma died in 1934 and the following year Mozes and his two daughters decided to live with his sister Betje in the Westwijkstraat in Steenwijk.

Students of the RSG Tromp Masters laid four stones with Demnig in the Tulpstraat, formerly the Westwijkstraat: for Betje de Leeuw-de Leeuw, her brother Mozes and his children Margott Jenny and Elisabeth. Why did the RSG students adopt these stones? That was because of Elisabeth's history. Elisabeth was eleven years old when she came to Steenwijk. After primary school she went to the HBS in Steenwijk. She turned out to be a brilliant student but on September 1, 1941 she had to leave this school because she was Jewish.
That is why people at RSG Tromp Meesters feel very involved with this family. The school launched an action to raise money for the stones.
After she was expelled from school in Steenwijk, Elisabeth v left for Amsterdam, where she worked to take care of school-going youth.
To the camp

In 1942 Moses was called up to work in Camp Conrad. Like the other Jewish men in the labor camps, he was transferred to Westerbork on 3 October of that year and from there by train close to his birthplace Winschoten to Auschwitz. He died, aged 59, in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on October 9, 1942.

Margott and her aunt Betje were forced to move in with Kaatje de Leeuw in the Gasthuislaan. In April 1943 they were among the 13 Jewish Steenwijkers who were taken from their homes and transported to Vught. There they saw Elisabeth who had arrived from Amsterdam a few days earlier. Betje was sent to Westerbork after a month and died a week later at the age of 67 in Sobibor.

Margott and Elisabeth worked as a coupeuse in Vught, but in November deportation to Auschwitz also followed. Because they were still able to work, they survived there for several more weeks, but in January they died of exhaustion just 50 km from Beuthen, where they had lived with their mother. Margott turned 25 and Elisabeth 19.

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