Biography

The fate of Juda Buitenkant.

Juda Buitenkant was a son of Nantes Buitenkant and Klaartje Snijders. He was born in Amsterdam on 11 August 1901 and was employed as warehouse clerk in the haberdashery trade. He was unmarried and lived at home with his parents in the Weesperstraat 7 ground floor in Amsterdam and had obtained his diploma typing through the 3-year evening school and his French diploma through the 5-year evening school.

When all the Jews in the Netherlands were mandory obliged to have themselves registered with the Jewish Council, Juda Buitenkant had this job on 16 July 1942 at the General Service department of the Council, working with the filing cabinet at the Nieuwe Keizersgracht. From there, he was transferred on 5 January 1943 to the department of vegetable distribution as an administrator. His exemption-stamp was 90981 from the series 80.000 – 100.000, the actual Jewish Council stamps.

In May 1943, the Germans demanded that the Jewish Council had to “release” 7000 members of their staf  “for departure”. A committee had to place the Jewish Council personnel on three lists, the "absolutely indispensable", the "necessary for work" and those who were "missable", which caused great panic and chaos in the Council. On the evening of 25 May, those 7000 summoned persons were supposed to appear, but far fewer appeared. The next day this culminated in the raid on 26 May, in which 3000 people were eventually caught in the Amsterdam ghetto and taken to the assembly point at the Muiderpoort station. (source: website dbnl.org/“Ondergang” by Dr. J. Presser, pages 367-375).

The Muiderpoort station was the assembly point where the arrested Jews had to wait for hours for the train to Westerbork. A photo report was made on the site for the weekly magazine “Storm” of the German SS in the Netherlands. Some of these photos were printed in the 4 June 4 edition as part of an article that ended with the sentence: “It was not hard for us to say goodbye”. (source: website oorlogsbronnen.nl/razzia 26 Mei 1943 – only Dutch language).

 Juda Buitenkant was also arrested on 26 May 1943 and deported to Westerbork, where he was registered on May 27 and housed in barrack 61. Juda then made attempts to evade deportation. On 3 June a certain Joh. van der Pol in Nijkerk was asked to provide a Puttkammer statement, stating that the countervalues had been deposited. On 12 June, the question to V.d. Pol was posed when the Puttkammer statement must be in Westerbork at the latest. 

On 15 June the Psychotechnical Institute of the Jewish Council at Amstel 25, was asked: please send imminent test Mr. Biegel. And on 18 June 1943, confirmation was requested from the Jewish Center for Vocational Training that the person concerned had successfully completed a cobbler's course. On 19 June both applications were passed on to the Jewish Center for Vocational Training. On 30 June the Psychotechnical report and certificate were sent by post to Westberbork, which were handed out to the person concerned on 1 July 1943. 

The final result was that all this had led to nothing; Juda Buitenkant nevertheless had been deported anyway on 6 July 1943 to the extermination camp Sobibor in a transport of 2417 victims in total, where Judah was murdered directly in the gas chambers on arrival there on 9 July 1943. There were no survivors of this transport.

Sources include, the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Nantes Buitenkant, archive card of  Juda Buitenkant; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Juda Buitenkant; Stamps and Exemptions/Dr. J. Presser “Ondergang” volumel 1 edition 1965, page 287; website Joods Amsterdam/Joodse Raad  (Dutch language only) and the Wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl.

All rights reserved