From the children of Barend Reiss and Hanna Marie Root, who still lived at home with their mother on the Tugelaweg 97 parterre – their father had died in March 1940 and was burried at the Jewish Cemetery in Diemen – Kitty and Esther were registered in Westerbork on 22 July 1942. Most likely they had responded to the call for “provision of additional work in Germany”.
After entering Westerbork, Esther Reiss married one week later, on 29 July 1942 Jacob Glasbeek from the Ten Katestraat 3 1st floor in Amsterdam, a son of Hartog Glasbeek and Saartje Lucasse, a desperate attempt to be able to stay together during transport to the work expansion or to (temporarily) escape deportation through marriage.
The latter was only partially successful: Esther and Kitty were exempted from deportation until 1 September 1942, as notes on their registration cards from the Jewish Council show. But whether the purpose of this exemption was solely to be able to meet all formalities for entering into a marriage, such as giving notice of marriage, obtaining parental consent, the wedding ceremony itself and drawing up and registering the deed, or whether the exemption had another reason, is unknown.
Whether the administrative handling of the marriage of Esther Reiss and Jacob Glasbeek had gone so quickly or whether there were other reason for this, is not clear; clear is however that Kitty, her sister Esther and her newly wed husband Jacob Glasbeek were put on transport NOT on 1 September but already two days after the wedding, on 31 July 1942, not to the work expansion in Germany but to Auschwitz, where upon arrival there they were deployed ad forced labourers, to perform their “labor” there.
It is also not known who on which date exactly lost his/her life there. Therefore the Ministry of Justice has ordered the City of Amsterdam after the war, to draw up certificates of death for Kitty Reiss, Esther Glasbeek-Reiss and for Jacob Glasbeek, in which has been established that they have died in Auschwitz on 30 September 1942.
Sources among others: City Achive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Barend Reiss, archive cards of Hanna Marie Reiss-Root, Esther Reiss, Kitty Reiss and of Jacob Glasbeek; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Esther Reiss, Kitty Reiss and Jacob Glasbeek; the Wikipedia listing of jodentransporten vanuit nederland.nl and the websites “huwelijk in kamp westerbork” en “een wanhoopsdaad van liefde”.