Leonard Vos was the only child of Barend Vos and Naatje Peeper. He was born in Belgium and was unmarried. He worked as a warehouse clerk and as an office clerk. His father Barend Vos already lived in Borgerhout, but left from there to Amsterdam to marry Naatje Peeper on 14 March 1917.
On 30 August 1919 Barend Vos returned from Amsterdam in Antwerp, lived there with his parents in the Provinciestraat 273. And when also his wife Naatje arrived, they lived in the Van Beethovenstraat 28 but moved to Borgerhout in September 1920, where they found housing in the Vooruitzichtstraat 6. There on 25 April 1922 Leonard Vos was born.
The marriage of his parents however did not last and was dissolved by divorce in 1933 in Amsterdam. Leonard remained there with his mother, where they moved into a house at Weesperstraat 31 3rd floor on 12 March 1934. At the end of August 1934, also his father left Amsterdam for Den Haag. On 11 February 1941 Leonard and his mother moved to Nieuwe Keizersgracht 31 basement, which also became their last known address in the Netherlands.
Leonard’s mother, Naatje Peeper, who worked as a seamstress, was arrested on 24 July 1943, carried off to Westerbork and deported to Auschwitz on 24 August 1943. Upon arrival there on 27 August 1943 she has been gassed immediately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
One month after his mother was caught, Leonard was arrested and carried off to Westerbork too, where he ended up in the penal barrack 67. The reason why he was treated as a “penal case” is unknown. He was put on transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz on 31 August 1943 and upon arrival somewhere in "the East" put to work in forced labour. Not known is however where Leonard has ended up, nor when and under what circumstances he has lost his life.
Therefore, the Dutch Ministry of Justice after the war ordered the Municipality of Amsterdam to draw up a certificate of death for Leonard Vos, in which has been established that he has died in Poland on 31 March 1944.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, archive cards of Leonard Vos and Naatje Peeper; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Leonard Vos and Naatje Peeper and the certificate of death for Leonard Vos, made out on 11 January 1952 in Amsterdam, register A92-Folio 52-v – nr. 306.