Joseph van Gelder was a son of Levie van Gelder and Kaatje Sluijter. He was born as the 2nd child on 19 March 1884 in Amsterdam and on 15 March 1904 he was drafted for the Militia and was assigned in 8th Regiment Infantry, were he was dismissed on 31 December 1918 “due to end of service”. He provided in his living as a window dresser and painter. His last job was bread deliverer.
Joseph’s parents lived in Germany, and at the time of the wedding of their daughter Sophia on 4 March 1914, in Düsseldorf. Joseph’s 1-year older sister married moreover in Amsterdam – where she also resided – the office clerk Samson Weening, who however passed away in May 1922. In December 1917 their daughter Josephine was born an in March 1922 their son Louis. In later years, the widowed Sophia Weening-van Gelder with her daughter and son runned a guest house in the Van Breestraat 77 ground floor. They have all survived the Holocaust.
Joseph’s father, who was a commission agent in fruit, passed away on 1 April 1937 in the Municipality of Haigerloch, located in the state of Baden-Würtemberg in Germany and his mother Kaatje Sluijter, (born in 1853), who still attended the wedding of her daughter Sophia in 1914 in Amsterdam, presumably also died somewhere in Germany. No further information is known about her.
On 1 August 1912 Joseph van Gelder married in Düsseldorf Isabella Wilhelmina Adelgunde Baues, and they lived quite some time in Germany. However, the marriage did not last and at some point the marriage was dissolved by divorce.
On 10 November 1937 Joseph returned alone from Bremerhaven in Germany in Amsterdam, where he found place to live at various addresses, among others in the Noorderstraat 62, at Reguliersgracht 86 and at Kerkstraat 280, addresses where he always stayed for no longer than 4 or 5 weeks. On 9 May 1938 Joseph found living space at Noorderstraat 62 again, where he stayed till July 1942. On 23rd of that month he moved to Van Breestraat 77 ground floor, where his widowed sister Sophia, niece Josephine and nephew Louis runned a guest house.
Joseph’s stay in the Van Breestraat however did not last long; already on 2 October 1942 he was deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz. This transport with 1014 deportees made a stop at Kozel, located ±80 km west of Auschwitz, where 160 boys and men between 15 and 50 years were forced to leave the train. They were put to work as forced laborers in the surrounding labor camps of Siliesia.
Joseph van Gelder was already 58 years of age in 1942 and it looks not presumable that he has belonged to the group of 160 deportees, who had to leave the train at Kozel. Joseph eventually ended up in Wiesau, a small town with less than 4000 inhabitants at the time, located ±60 km east of the city of Bayreuth in Bavaria. However it is unknown how he has ended up there. But there in Wiesau in Germany, Joseph van Geleder has died on 15 May 1944.
Sources inclurde the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card and archive card of Joseph van Gelder; the wedding certificate for Sophia van Gelder x Samson Weening from Amsterdam; Amsterdam residence cards of Noorderstraat 62, Reguliersgracht 86 and Kerkstraat 280; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Joseph van Gelder, Sophia Weening-van Gelder and Louis Weening; the certificate of death for Joseph van Gelder, nr. 135 dated 13 December 1951 from the A-register 90-folio 24 verso, made oud in Amsterdam and the wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit nederland.nl.