Juliette Barmes was born on 11 January 1913 as a daughter of Joseph Barmes and Lucie Rueff. Before the war, she lived with her 6-year elder sister Jeanne in the Blasiusstraat 66 1st floor in Amsterdam-East. Juliette worked as a sales lady in the fashion shop of Maison de Vries in the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam. There also worked the window dresser Emanuel van West, who was usually called Willem. He was the brother of Aron van West, who usually was called Ab. Maison de Vries also had an active drama club that gave performances and for which tickets could be bought. Juliette went there with a colleague and that night, also Ab van West appeared to be there. So there she met him for the first time.
Aron van West was born on 18 June 1908 in Amsterdam and was the son of Joseph van West and Gracia Rodrigues Pereira. Aron van West was in books. He had a job in the book- and printstore Emmering in Amsterdam, who had also an antiquarian bookshop. But he did not like it there and wanted to start his own antiquarian bookshop. Therefore he needed money. He was acquainted with a German, probably a business relation of bookstore Emmering, who had money and who was prepared to finance Ab’s aspirations, but in retrospect he appeared not to have money to finance Ab’s business plans, so the money should come from elsewhere.
After that first acquaintance, several followed which eventually led to Juliette’s engagement and marriage with Aron van West on 30 December 1936. They went living in the Uithoornstraat 11 parterre in Amsterdam. They had a bookshop there, a library and an agency of the N.I.W., the New Israelitic Weekly. In 1939 they sold the shop and in September of that year they moved to Curacaostraat 18-2nd floor, with their in July new born first daughter Gracia. (Grace). Ab then got this job as a bookseller of the Arbeiderspers (A.P.) – (Labour Press) in the Jan Evertsenstraat in Amsterdam-West.
After the outbreak of the war and the Germans in February 1941 had set up a Jewish Council, then in October of 1941 all Jewish magazines were prohibited, except “Het Joodsche Weekblad” – the Jewish Weekly, the official medium of the Jewish Council. Therefort since I July 1942 Juliette van West-Barmes then became officially the “Depot holder of the “Joodsche Weekblad”, which was located in the Curacaostaat 18 and for which she got a "Sperre", issued by the Jewish Council with nr. 23/97103.(exempted from deportation for the time being).
For some months then, Juliette and Ab had also there living in a Jewish child, named Janneman. When in the summer of 1942 the deportations began, the child had to go away again. What he was actually called has never been known.
The first raids were also held those times, whereby Juliette’s husband Ab became victim of on 6 August 1942. He was brought to the Hollandsche Schouburg and that same night put on transport to Westerbork and already on 7 August deported to Auschwitz. There, on arrival on 10 August, he was deployed at first as a forced labourer but according to the “Sterbebücher” from Auschwitz (Deathbooks), he was murdered there on 21 August 1942.
This all was not known after the war; therefore the Dutch Ministry of Justice has established a juridical date of death for Aron van West, registered in a certificate of death which has been drawn up by the City of Amsterdam, which state that Aron van West has died in Auschwitz on 30 September 1942.
The text of this story was told by Juliette herself during the years 1990-2000 and was edited by the editors of the Joods Monument, supplemented where necessary and put on this website on 15 April 2020.