Benedictus Wijnman was born in Amsterdam to Wolf Wijnman and Berta Haagman. He had a sister, Esther Wijnman Batist (4.3.1911) and a brother, Willie Wijnman (28.4.1909). Married to Liesel Sondheimer and father of Wolfgang (15.3.1936), he ran with his wife a thriving fur business, occupying 17 workers, even working for the German army after Occupation in 1940.
He left Amsterdam on May 6, 1942, together with his colleague or associate Siegfried Wijnschenk (born in Soerabaya on June 9, 1912), because the Gestapo had threatened the two Jewish men, accusing them of sabotageing some fur orderings for the Wehrmachtsmarine (probably wanting to expropriate them brutally). Wijnman and Wijnschenk managed to cross into Switzerland on May 22 and contacted their consulate in Bern (vice-consul Van der Elst). But the Swiss army was opposed to keeping them, considering them crooked and undesirable. The Swiss civil government, on the contrary, tried to protect them against the enormous danger of being turned back to occupied France. After three months of uncertainty, Benedictus Wijnman and Siegfried Wijnschenk were nevertheless thrown out by the Swiss militaries, though Bern had emitted an internment decree for them. Turned back at the occupied zone border near Geneva, they were immediately seized by the Germans, jailed in Gex, then in Champagnole, and sent to Drancy, from where they were deported to Auschwitz on September 18, 1942 (34th convoy).
Source: Swiss Federal Archives, E 4264 (-) 1985/196, Nr. 3321; Register of the German prison in Gex (occupied France), Gex Municipal Archives.