Biography

About Rebecca Friedberg-Knap

Rebecca Knap was a daughter of Marcus Knap and Debora van Emrik. She was born as the 7th child into a family with fourteen children, of whom one daughter has died in childhood, only 5 months old; five children have died already before the war; two daughthers have survived the Holocaust and six children, among them Elizabeth, Meijer Filip, Simon, Sara, Benjamin and Rebecca self have been killed in the Shoah.

Rebecca married in Rotterdam on 6 January 1909 to Soroch Friedberg from Libau (Latvia), a son of Joseph Lewin Friedberg and Sophie Traugut. The couple had three children in Rotterdam: Leo in 1909; Markus in 1912 and Sophie Debora in 1914. Only Leo survived the Shoah.

Since October 1924 the Friedberg family have moved to Antwerp. Rebecca’s husband Soroch Friedberg has died there on 4 September 1936 and was interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Putte. Her son Leo survived the Holocaust and lived with his wife still in Antwerp after the war. Her son Markus was married and lived in Leiden. Her daughter Sophie Debora was not married but had in Antwerp a twin on 14 February 1937: Denise and Willy.

On 1 Autust 1940 Rebecca has been officially removed from the Peoples Registry of the City of Antwerp. She has moved from the Lange Beeldenkensstraat 179 to Deurne Merksem.  Rebecca Knap has been deported with Convoy 8 from Mechelen to Auschwitz on 8 September 1942, which has arrived there on 10 September and where she has been killed on 11 September 1942.

City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration cards of Marcus Knap and Soroch Friedberg; Dossier of Foreigners of the City of Antwerp, no. 110270, images 7-39 and the Memorial of the Deportation of the Belgian Jews.