Willem Zeelander

Willem Zeelander came from a family with two children.
His father was a diamond cutter. His parents did everything to make him and his brother comfortable. The family was rich nor poor. In 1922 the family moved to Antwerp, where the situation was better for diamond traders and workers. Willem Zeelander always was first of his class. In 1938 he returned to Amsterdam, where he could get a good job…

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 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 the firs…