The de Leeuw Family and the Holocaust

Jason Evans is a living descendant of the de Leeuw family, a large Dutch-Jewish family whose history was shattered by the Holocaust.

At the great-grandparent level and above, Jason’s ancestry is also connected to the Meyer, Baruch and Ettlinger families. Current family-tree research identifies almost one hundred of Jason’s relatives who died in Auschwitz, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, Westerbork, Mauthausen, Treblinka, Buchenwald and Dachau.

They were parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, husbands and wives. Their families had roots across the Netherlands and Germany, particularly in Winschoten, Hamburg and Karlsruhe.

Some were elderly. Some were children. In several cases, parents and children share the same recorded place and date of death.

Entire branches of families disappeared.

The de Leeuw family

De Leeuw means “the lion” in Dutch, carrying the symbolic connection to the Lion of Judah.

Jason’s great-great grandmother fled Germany and came to England as a Jewish refugee at the end of 1939. Both of Jason’s Jewish great-grandparents also settled in England, allowing a small strand of the family to survive.

Across the wider family, lives were destroyed and ended by Nazi persecution. Some people escaped, hid or survived. Many others did not.

The result was a family divided across countries, languages and identities: Dutch, German, British and Israeli; Jewish and Christian; hidden, converted, displaced and rebuilt.

This is one of the difficult truths contained within Holocaust family history. Survival did not mean carrying on as before. It often meant separation, silence, migration, changed names, lost faith and the gradual disappearance of people and stories from everyday family memory.

The names

The following roll records all 96 people currently identified through Jason’s family-tree research.

Some were relatives by blood. Others were connected through marriage and through families whose histories repeatedly crossed with the de Leeuws.

Each entry preserves the place and date of death recorded in the current family tree. Where only a year is known, no more precise date has been added.

ונתתי להם בביתי ובחומתי יד ושם טוב מבנים ומבנות שם עולם אתן לו אשר לא יכרת

Auschwitz

48 people

  • Helena van Straten, 26 July 1942

  • Abraham Samuel Woudstra, 12 August 1942

  • Leon de Vries, 18 August 1942

  • Jacob Meijer de Leeuw, 7 September 1942

  • Heiman Israels, 30 September 1942

  • Marcus Samuel Niekerk, 30 September 1942

  • Hartog Lek, 8 October 1942

  • Regiena Manus de Jong, 12 October 1942

  • Alex de Leeuw, 19 October 1942

  • Isodor de Groot, 22 October 1942

  • Mozes de Groot, 26 October 1942

  • Mozes van Straten, 26 October 1942

  • Diena de Leeuw, 2 November 1942

  • Rosa Estella Niekerk, 2 November 1942

  • Sara “Meijer” de Leeuw, 2 November 1942

  • Siena Hendrika Joosten, 2 November 1942

  • Gesina Manus de Jong, 5 November 1942

  • Mietje de Leeuw, 5 November 1942

  • Henriëtte de Leeuw, 9 November 1942

  • Bettje Mozes Levie Cohen, 23 November 1942

  • Jacob Marcus de Leeuw, 23 November 1942

  • Jacob van der Woude, 23 November 1942

  • Sophie “Jacob” de Leeuw, 23 November 1942

  • Aaltje Leon de Vries, 15 December 1942

  • Levie Israëls, 15 December 1942

  • Estella de Leeuw, 25 January 1943

  • Evelien de Jong, 25 January 1943

  • Joseph Levie de Leeuw, 25 January 1943

  • Sara de Leeuw, 25 January 1943

  • Fannij de Leeuw, 26 January 1943

  • Leentje de Leeuw, 26 January 1943

  • Aron de Leeuw, 12 February 1943

  • Etel Smijewski, 19 February 1943

  • Geertruida de Leeuw, 19 February 1943

  • Jansje van Straten, 26 February 1943

  • Martin “Jacob” de Leeuw, 28 February 1943

  • Hermina Israëls, 12 March 1943

  • Nico de Leeuw, 30 April 1943

  • Siegfried de Leeuw, 30 April 1943

  • Adolf Duveen, 19 November 1943

  • Emanuel van Straten, 19 November 1943

  • Reintje Duveen, 19 November 1943

  • Minna Rosenberg, 29 November 1943

  • Aron Leon de Vries, 31 March 1944

  • Martinus Leon de Vries, 31 March 1944

  • Clara Stein, 22 May 1944

  • Izak de Leeuw, 6 September 1944

  • Rose Weinberg, 13 October 1944

Bergen-Belsen

3 people

  • Albert Nathan Weinberg, 11 April 1945

  • Selma van Straten, 13 April 1945

  • Wijnand Hermanus Verbeek, 31 May 1945

Mauthausen

2 people

  • Lion van Straten, born in 1890, 31 October 1941

  • Lion van Straten, born in 1920, 20 February 1945

Sobibor

37 people

  • Betje de Leeuw, 13 March 1943

  • Helena van Geuns, 20 March 1943

  • Herman de Leeuw, 20 March 1943

  • Siemon de Leeuw, 20 March 1943

  • Suze Fonteijn, 20 March 1943

  • Rebekka van Straten, 9 April 1943

  • Abraham Marcus de Leeuw, 23 April 1943

  • Margarita Charlotta de Groot, 23 April 1943

  • Mannes Simon de Groot, 30 April 1943

  • Adelheid Roozendaal, 7 May 1943

  • Alfred de Leeuw, 7 May 1943

  • Bernard de Leeuw, 7 May 1943

  • Betje Slager, 7 May 1943

  • David de Groot, 7 May 1943

  • Donald Julius de Leeuw, 7 May 1943

  • Rosetta de Vries, 7 May 1943

  • Salomon de Groot, 7 May 1943

  • Selma de Leeuw, 7 May 1943

  • Sophia Noach, 7 May 1943

  • Bendie Marcus de Leeuw, 14 May 1943

  • Hijman van Straten, 14 May 1943

  • Goldine “Meijer” de Leeuw, 21 May 1943

  • Abraham Samuel van Geuns, 28 May 1943

  • Elizabeth Woudstra, 28 May 1943

  • Lena Geuns, 28 May 1943

  • Lina Geuns, 28 May 1943

  • Mozes van Ameringen, 28 May 1943

  • Eduard Fonteijn, 4 June 1943

  • Gracia Jessurum Lobo, 4 June 1943

  • Leopold Lehman Fonteijn, 4 June 1943

  • Regine Eveliene de Leeuw, 11 June 1943

  • Jack Fonteijn, 9 July 1943

  • Levie Abraham de Leeuw, 9 July 1943

  • Annegina Behr, 16 July 1943

  • Israel Manus de Jong, 16 July 1943

  • Max de Leeuw, 16 July 1943

  • Mietje de Jong, 16 July 1943

Treblinka

2 people

  • Judith Freimann, also recorded as Iudith Yehudit Freymann, Freiman or Friman, 1942

  • Louis Ludwig Pinczower, 26 September 1942

Westerbork

2 people

  • Hendelina Abraham Benima, 9 January 1943

  • Berendina de Leeuw, 25 April 1943

Buchenwald

1 person

  • Joseph Issler, 15 July 1941

Dachau

1 person

  • Willem Lek, 6 February 1945

Each name belonged to a life.

Together, these people show the extent to which one extended family network was devastated. Their names crossed generations, marriages, towns and national borders. Many would otherwise survive only as entries scattered across archives and family trees.

Recording these names together cannot restore what was taken from them. It can, however, offer each of them a memorial and a name, helping to ensure that they are seen, carried forward and remembered.

Survival, silence and identity

The Holocaust did not only murder individuals. It permanently altered the lives and identities of those who survived.

Some members of the extended family fled to Britain. Others went elsewhere. Some hid, changed their names or converted. Some rarely spoke about what had happened. Later generations sometimes grew up knowing little or nothing about the Jewish side of their family.

That silence is itself part of the inheritance.

For Jason, researching this history has meant recovering names that were almost lost, reconnecting branches separated by war and understanding that his own life belongs within a much larger Jewish family story.

It is a story of murder and survival, loss and escape. It is a story of people who disappeared from family memory and of descendants who are still here.

Why remembrance matters

To write names down and to record life stories is an act of remembrance. The Holocaust is often spoken about through numbers: six million Jewish people murdered, millions more persecuted and families and communities destroyed across Europe.

Family history brings those numbers back to human scale.

A husband and wife murdered at Auschwitz.

A fourteen-year-old boy murdered with his parents at Sobibor.

Two young sisters murdered with their mother and father.

A one-year-old child whose life had barely begun.

A family line broken.

This page exists because forgetting becomes easy when families are scattered, names change and generations pass.

Their names are part of Jason’s story and remembering them is now part of his life.

Family history in A Son Never Forgets

This research forms an important part of the closing chapters of Jason’s book, A Son Never Forgets.

The Holocaust and the infected blood scandal are not compared. Their histories, causes and scale are profoundly different. The connection lies in memory: the preservation of names, testimony and documentary evidence, and the responsibility of the living to ensure that individual lives are not lost to silence.