Werner Benno van Gelder was the youngest of the three children of Leizer van Gelder and Johanna an Gelder and was born 7 December 1909 in Essen in Germany. He had another brother Rudolf Ludwig and a sister Irma Friederike. Werner and his sibs have lost their lives during the Shoah; his mother passed away in 1939 and his father survived the Holocaust and died in 1957 in Rotterdam.
Werner Benno arrived in May 1933, together with his parents from Essen in Amsterdam but left in September 1934 for Den Haag, where he came living at Rijswijksestraat 58b. His parents joined him in the last months of 1934 and early January 1935; They first returned still from Amsterdam to Essen.
His sister Irma married Isidore Eduard Kaas in December 1937 and they stayed living in Den Haag. Werner Benno, his brother Rudolf Ludwig and their parents Leizer and Johanna van Gelder moved however to Maastricht in 1937. Werner lived there at St. Antoniuslaan 11b; his brother and parents at Heerderweg 52. Their last known address in Maastricht was Alexander Battalaan 2b.
Werner was a fishmonger. He was unmarried and tried – just as his brother Rudolf – to escape deportation by going into hiding. Probably both have been betrayed; on 3 June 1933 Werner was brought into transit camp Westerbork were he was locked in in penal barrack 67. On 31 July 1944 he, and another 212 other deportees were deported to Theresienstadt and from there Werner was put on transport to Auschwitz on 28 September 1944. However, he never arrived in Auschwitz; en route, somewhere in Bavaria, Werner Benno van Gelder has died on 4 May 1945, probably due to illnesses and hardship.
Sources among others: City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Leizer van Gelder; Municipal Archive of Den Haag, family registration card of Leizer van Gelder; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Werner Benno van Gelder; website openarchieven.nl/Werner Benno van Gelder and his Certificate of Death no.269 dated 5 April 1952 from the Regionaal Historisch Centrum Limburg, of which the extract has been issued by the Ministry of Justice.