Catharina Davids, born on 6 September 1903 in Rotterdam, was a daughter of Louis Davids and Jetje Moscoviter. She married 9 April 1930 in Rotterdam the ship’s servant Abram de Winter, who was born on 26 October 1901 in Rotterdam as son of Michiel de Winter and Schoontje Mug. The couple had one daughter, named Schoontje, who was born in Rotterdam on 28 July 1930.
When Catharina and Abram were married in 1930, they moved into a house in the Josephstraat 50b in Rotterdam; one year later in the Helmersstraat 16a and 32a and in 1939 they moved to Kruisstraat 30b in the centre of Rotterdam. Presumalby as a result of the bombardment on Rotterdam of 14 May 1940, they have moved to Amsterdam in November 1940, where they ended up in the Koningsstraat 43 3rd floor, which was located in the Nieuwmarkt district in the centre of Amsterdam. But already on 22 January 1941 they moved again, now to Den Haag where they came living in the Waterloostraat 44.
On 2 October 1942, usually at night, families of Jewish men from Den Haag, who were previously deployed as forced labourers in the Jewish labor camps in the North of the Netherlands, were arrested and carried off to Westerbork by the Sicherheits police and the police from Den Haag.
From the registration card of Abram de Winter from the Jewish Council file cabinet is not to deduce whether he was deployed in a Jewish labor camp somewhere in spring 1942 or not. But clear was that Abram de Winter, his wife Catharina and daughter Schoontje have been put on transport to Auschwitz on 12 October 1942. On arrival there on 15 October 1942, Catharina de Winter-Davids and her 12-year old daughter Schoontje were murdered immediately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Abram however was selected for forced labor during the selection on the “Rampe”, the platform where trains in Auschwitz arrived. Circumstances were inhumane and it is not known on which date exactly Abram has lost his life there, of hardship and/or diseases or that he still has been sent to the gas chambers at some point. It is therefore that the Dutch Ministry of Justice after the war has ordered the Municipality of Den Haag, to draw up a certificate of death for Abram de Winter, in which was established that he has died in Auschwitz on 28 February 1943.
At an unknown date unfortunately, two letters for Abram de Winter have arrived in the offices of the Jewish Council. One was a letter of his father Michiel de Winter, which he has sent from his address then: 20 Domainstreet, South Yarra, Victoria Australia and the other was from his uncle Sender Kamelgarn from the USA, who was married to a sister of his mother Jetje, Rebekka Moscoviter. He then lived at 173 West, 170th Street in New York City. No doubt Abraham de Winter never received those letters.
Sources including the City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration cards of Abram de Winter, Michiel de Winter, Leendert Moscoviter and Louis Davids; the wedding certificate from Rotterdam for De Winter/Davids; the City Archive of Amsterdam, archive card of Abram de Winter; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Abram de Winter, Catharina Davids-de Winter and Schoontje de Winter; website Jewish Herritage Foundation (Stichting Joods Erfgoed Den Haag.nl) re round-ups in 1942 and the certificates of death from Den Haag, nr. C65 dated 5 Jan 1951 for Abram de Winter, nr.C57 dated 5 Jan 1951 for Catharina Davids.