Marie van Zuiden was a daughter of Abraham van Zuiden and Sara van Huiden. She was the eldest of the two daughters and was born on 22 June 1903 in Meppel. Her father was a haberdasher and they lived at 2e Hoofdstraat in Meppel (yet Hoofdstraat). In 1909 Marie's sister Regina Alida was born.
On 6 July 1925 Marie married in Meppel the 31-year old Meijer van Esso, a son of Levie Meijer van Esso and Sariena Kan. The Van Esso-Kan couple had two sons, namely Meijer in 1893 and Mourits (Maurits) in 1895, who however, passed away in Groningen in 1928.
Of the parents of Meijer and Mourits van Esso, father Levie Meijer van Esso passed away on 27 April 1931 in Meppel; on the other hand, mother Sariena Kan was murdered in Sobibor on 21 May 1943, almost 81 year old. Of the parents of Marie and Regina Alida van Zuiden, father Abraham van Zuiden had died already in 1927 in Apeldoorn, but also their mother Sara van Huiden was murdered in Auschwitz on 15 September 1943, aged 68.
Marie van Zuiden and Meijer van Esso had three children together, namely Leo, Ada and Maurits. Leo, who was born on 190 may 1926 in Meppel but was murdered during the Shoah, just like his parents. Ada was born on 3 January 1928 in Meppel but she survived the Holocaust; it appeared that she has returned to Holland via Sweden in 1945. Also the third child, Maurits, who was born on 6 July 1929 in Meppel, survived the Holocaust but died in Zeist on 4 May 1951.
The Van Esso family lived in Meppel, where Meijer as a merchant in gold- and silver earned his living. Till 1939 the family lived at Parklaan 5, but moved 15 July 1939 to Amsterdam, where they moved into a house in the Jan Willem Brouwersstraat 9 ground floor, located in the neighborhood of the Concertgebouw.
On 29 July 1942, Meijer van Esso had a “Sperre” as a diamond merchant from the Jewish Council, because of “diamond”. Due to that, the entire family was exempted from deportation for the time being. Meijer had a job at the Jewish Council as a neighbourhood carer for the poor at the Municipal Social Affairs Office, located at Houtmarkt 10 – which was named Jonas Daniel Meijerplein before the war.
Because of the provisional exemption from deportation, their son Leo also got a job through the Jewish Council; from 2 August 1942, he became a kitchen servant at the N.I.Z., the Dutch Israelitic Hospital at Nieuwe Keizersgracht 110, where he had been “seconded” via the JVvVV, the Jewish Association for Nursing and Care. Before the war, Leo worked as an office clerk.
Somewhere between 1941 and April 1943 Meijer van Esso, his wife Marie van Zuiden and their children Ada and Leo ended up in Berlin. The correct date could not be ascertained. On the one hand, data from NSDOK (Nationaal Sozialistische Dokumentationszentrum) in Cologne show that their “Letzter frei gewälter Wohnort: Berlin” was. Other sources also indicate that they were in Berlin in the spring of 1943, but an address could not be ascertained either.
On 19 April 1943, the four members of the Van Esso family, viz. Meijer, his wife Marie, son Leo and daughter Ada were transported from the Gestapo assembly camp of the former boys' school in the Grosse Hamburgerstrasse in Berlin with the 37th “Osttransport” to Auschwitz.
Ada van Esso survived the Holocaust. In October 1940 she stayed with the family of Johannes Visscher who lived at Hoofdweg 352 1st floor in Amsterdam-West. Also Ada was deported to Auschwitz via the Grosse Hamburgerstrasse Gestapo assembly camp in Berlin on 19 April 1943, but post-war notes on her Jewish Council registration card indicate that she had returned to the Netherlands according to “a list Sweden”.
On 22 September 1948, by order of the District Court of Amsterdam, it has been officially established that Meijer van Esso, his wife Maria van Esso-van Zuiden and their son Leo van Esso have died in Auschwitz on 15 September 1943. The Municpality of Amsterdam subsequently has drawn up their certificates of death on 22 October 1948, which have been registered in the death register 1948 of the Civil Registry of Amsterdam, in register 8-folio 89verso and 90, deed nrs. 531, 532 and 533.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, archive cards of Meijer van Esso, Maria van Zuiden and Leo van Esso; website het geheugen van Drenthe.nl/2e Hoofdstraat Meppel; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Meijer van Esso, Marie van Esso-van Zuiden, Leo van Esso and Ada van Esso and the website mooi Zeist.nl/Utrechtseweg 69.