Jeannette Porcelijn was a daughter of Salomon Porcelijn and Rika Augurk. As the 3rd in a family of seven children, she was born in Amsterdam on 17 August 1907 and worked there as a seamstress. On 2 August 1933 she married there Nathan van Coevorden, a son of Abraham van Coevorden and Rozette Driels. Nathan was born in Groningen on 7 November 1889 and he was employed as a clerk in a paper trade. Nathan and Jeannette had two children together: Albert in February 1935 and Rita in March 1940.
When Nathan and Jeannette were married in 1933, they moved into living space in the Meerhuizenstraat 4 in Amsterdam. In 1934 they moved to President Steijnstraat 15 2nd floor in Amsterdam-East. After having resided in the Lepelstraat and in the Tilanusstraat, they moved in April 1938 to the Van Speijkstraat 8a in Zandvoort but returned to Amsterdam again in October 1938 were they found housing at Vechtstraat 150. In 1940 they relocated again to the Ruyschstraat 100 2nd floor in Amsterdam-East, which would turn out to be their last known address in the Netherlands.
In the spring of 1942, Nathan van Coevorden was called up for deployment in one of the Jewish labor camps in the Northern Netherlands and was sent to Mantinge labor camp in Drenthe. Even before the complete liquidation of all Jewish labor camps by the Germans, at the beginning of October 1942, Nathan was sent from Mantinge to Westerbork sometime in the first half of September 1942. Probably in the context of the so-called "family reunification", because Nathan's wife Jeanette Porcelijn and the children Albert and Rita had to report to Westerbork on 11 September 1942 for what was called "work expansion in Germany".
On 14 September 1942, the “reunited family” Van Coevorden was deported to Auschwitz. This transport, with a total of 902 deportees, made a stop at Kozel, a spot located ±80 km west of Auschwitz. There, 120 boys and men between the ages of 15 and 50 were forced to leave the train, after which they were put to work as forced laborers in the surrounding labor camps in Upper Silesia.
Those who remained in the train were transported further to Auschwitz to be murdered there. That was also the fate of Nathan's wife Jeannette van Coevorden-Porcelijn and their children Albert and Rika; upon arrival in Auschwitz on 17 September 1942, they were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Nathan van Coevorden, then already 52 years old, most probably still belonged to the group of 120 men who had to leave the train in Kozel. It is not known where he ended up, nor when, where and how he lost his life. That is why the Dutch authorities established after the war – partly on the basis of survivors' testimonies and other information – that Nathan van Coevorden could no longer be alive after 28 February 1943. On that basis, the Municipality of Amsterdam was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice to draw up a death certificate for Nathan van Coevorden, in which it was established that he has died on 28 February 1943 in Mid-Europe.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards of Salomon Porcelijn and Nathan van Coevorden, archive card of Nathan van Coevorden; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Nathan van Coevorden, Jeannette van Coevorden-Porcelijn and of Albert and Rita van Coevorden; website joodsewerkkampen.nl/Mantinge; the Wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl and the certificate of death nr. 110 dated 25 September 1953 from the A-register 101-folio 20 for Nathan van Coevorden, made out in Amsterdam.