Salomon, always named Sal, was a warehouse clerk at Gerzon’s Fashion Store. When his mother Mathilde Rueff passed away in March 1925, he was only 18 years old. He then came at home living with Salomon Dekker and aunt Celien Rueff at Oude Zijds Achterburgwal. But when aunt Celien was hospitalized in April 1933 in “Het Apeldoornsche Bosch”, he then had to move and came living with his aunt Lucie Rueff and uncle Joseph Barmes in the Blasiusstraat 66 1st floor in Amsterdam-East. However, there was no sleeping place for him. There was a front room, an intermediate room (alcove) where Joseph and Lucie slept, a back room, which was entirely furnished for Jeanne Barmes, who was a milliner and where she could sleep, make her fashion hats and receive her clients. And Juliette slept in the side room. But the neighbours had a small room available at the 3rd floor, which Sal could rent and where he then slept. In the morning, Sal and Juliette went to work together: Sal to Gerzon in the Spuistraat and Juliette to Maison de Vries in the Kalverstraat, where she then worked as apprentice sales lady.
Ab van Westf, the fiancé of Juliette Barmes, was employed with the book- and printsshop Emmering, but he did not like it there. He resigned and wanted to start an antiquarian bookshop for himself. For his purpose, he had to buy books on auctions and therefore he needed money. A German contact with whom he was acquainted, - probably in relationship with the bookshop, - and who had money, was prepared to fincance Ab’s business. This German arrived with his wife to Amsterdam and Trude entered that family as a “nanny” but was actually used as a maid to clean and do other work. In retrospect, this German turned out to have no money to finance Ab’s business plans so the money had to come from elsewhere, i.e. from Ab’s parents, but that’s another story.
So Ab knew Trude from the contacts he had with this German family. She was not so well there and Ab felt sorry for her. He suggested that she should go out, having a coffee in the Vijzelstraat, and Ab would bring his fiancé Juliette Barmes with him. And for Trude, he had someone too, Sal Munnikendam, who was then living with Barmes in the Blasiusstraat 66. It immediately clicked between Trude and Sal and the next day it appeared that they already had a date to go to the Rijksmuseum together.
Trude was said to have been baptized Catholic or Protestant. She played that out well during the war; in this way she had no Jewish grandparents and her child only two instead of four. Therefore he was considered not to be “fully Jewish” so they would not be sent to Auschwitz or Sobibor, but were deported to Theresienstadt, where they survived the Holocaust.
Based on the oral storied by Juliette van West-Barmes and Jetty Sprecher-Kattenburg on 21 September 2001.