Herman Gompertz was a son from the 2nd marriage of his fathet Bernard Elias Gompertz from Rheinberg Germany and Bertha de Beer from Leeuwarden. Bernard’s first wife Sara Schoolmeester, born in Haarlem, died 14 July 1878. She had one son, Edmond, who was born in 1877. From his 2nd marriage, Herman’s father had eight more children, of whom the last one was a stillborn daughter. Four other children have already died at young age.
Herman’s sisters Carolina and Charlotte were – just as he – murdered during the Shoah. His mother Bertha de Beer passed away in July 1933 in Zandvoort, nearly 80 years old and was interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Haarlem. His father committed suicide on 5 February 1894 in his cell in the House of Detention at Weteringschans in Amsterdam, after being arrested the day before for counterfeiting. He was 52 years old at that time.
Herman has lived with his family in the Sarphatistraat 138, at Westeinde 28 and 24 and since 1938 in the Zuider-Amstellaan 217 parterre. On 23 April 1940 the family moved to Volkerakstraat 6 which consisted of himself, his wife Betje Stibbe from Zwolle and his sons Freddy, who was born in 1916 and Max from 1919.
Freddy was a commercial traveler and left for Buenos Aires in 1936, but returned to Amsterdam in January 1939. In August 1943 he was unsubscribed from the Peoples Registry of Amsterdam with the note “V.O.W”. (translated: ”Left but Unknown Where to” – usually meant when one went into hiding). He had fled to Belgium and from there reached Switzerland, where he married Marguerite Mia Josephia Cremaud in Lausanne in May 1944. He survived the Holocaust and returned with his wife to the Netherlands in 1949.
Their son Max was officially unsubscribed from the Amsterdam Peoples Registry to Mechelen on 6 July 1943 but fled already earlier to Belgium, most likely to escape deportation in the Netherlands. However, he has been deported from Mechelen to Auschwitz with convoy 20 on 19 April 1943 and according to his certificate of death, which was drawn up in the City of Amsterdam on 26 September 1952 by order of the Ministery of Justice, in which has been established that Max Gompertz died in the surrounding of Auschwitz in Poland on 31 July 1943.
During the large-scale raids of early October 1942, Herman Gompertz and his wife Betje Stibbe were arrested and carried off to Westerbork. Herman stayed for quite some time in barrack 60 and Betje in barrack 81. Both were put on transport to Auschwitz on 8 December and on arrival there on 11 December 1942 immediately murdered.
Sources among others: City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Herman Gompertz, , archive cards of Herman Gompertz, Max Gompertz and Freddy Gompertz; Death of Bernard Elias Gompertz , cert.nr 1301 book 1-109 dated 6 Feb 1894 in Amsterdam and cert. 280 dated 10 March 1894 in Haarlem; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Herman Gompertz, Betje Gompertz-Stibbe and Max Gompertz and the certificate of death A97-fol.28, nr157 dated 26 Sept 1952 of Max Gompertz.