Koos and Rika, both children of Benedictus Bierschenk and Rika Cosman, lived together a few houses farther than their parents on Breede Hilledijk in Rotterdam. They lived at nr. 164 and were taken together as young Rotterdammers with the first transport from Rotterdam Loods 24 to Westerbork in the night of 30-31 July 1942 and deported from there to Auschwitz on 3 August. This transport with 1013 deportees, which arrived on 6 August, consisted of slightly more men than women, about half in the age of 18-35 years and a quarter in the age of 36-50 years old. This unequal demographic composition in those first transports was important to maintain the appearance that the active part of the population was sent out for the so-called “work employment”.
On arrival there on 6 August 1942, it seems rather certain that Koos and Rika were deployed as forced labourers in Auschwitz, but it is not known on which date exactly they lost their lives there. The roll call book of Auschwitz shows that from the transport of Koos and Rika, 427 men were taken to perform hard labor there. Of this transport there was only one survivor at the time the camps were liberated.
After the war, the Dutch Ministery of Justice ordered the municipality of Rotterdam to draw up certificates of death for Koos Bierschenk and Rika Bierschenk , in which – as for most Dutchmen who arrived in Auschwitz between 15 July and 30 September 1942 – their place and date of death was established as on 30 September 1942 in Auschwitz.
Sources among others: City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration card of Benedictus Bierschenk; website wiewaswie.nl; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Koos and Rika Bierschenk and research and additions of the curator Shoah and Hollandse Schouwburg.