Jacob van Gelderen

Jacob van Gelderen was the son of Michel van Gelderen and Frederika Fedder a family with four children: Jacob self, Alfred, Emma and Willem. On 14 June 1915 in Amsterdam Jacob was married to Alexandrina de Vries. She was the daughter of Jacob de Vries and Klaartje Mok. The couple had three children: Margreet, Johan and one child who presumably lived in the Dutch East-Indies during the war.
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Alexandrina and Jacob van Gelderen, committed suicide on the 15th of May, 1940,  together with their children Margreet and Johan.

It is still an extremely sensitive topic: suicide during the Second World War. Historians have not known what to do with it for a long time. What is the place of suicide bombers in war history?

Remarkably little has been written on this subject and there seems to be no list of names or memorial books at all. The Digital Monument (www.joodsmonument.nl) offers a place where relatives, sometimes for …