Rebecca Clara van West was a daughter of Salomon van West and Sophia Hen. She was born on 18 December 1879 in Amsterdam and she was employed as a shop-lady.
Her parents went to Antwerp already in June 1892; they lived at Plantin en Moretuslei 6 and father Salomon was working as a diamond polisher. Later they still moved to Montensstraat 72 in Borgerhout and since August 1905 they resieded at Stierstraat 28 in the Antwerp district of Zurenborg. Not only Rebecca Clara came to Belgium with her parents, but also her siblings Esther, Samuel, Mauritz, Judith, Roza and Hartog.
On 17 February 1906, the still unmarried Revecca Clara was convicted in Brussels according to the then applicable norms and laws for a so-called criminal offense: she was “convicted of attempted abortion resuling in death – 2 years” . Six years later, on 27 November 1912, she married in Amsterdam Isaäk Noach, who was born in Deventer on 25 February 1883 as a son of Isaak Noach and Marlina Windmuller. The couple had no children; the marriage did not last and was dissolved by divorce on 21 February 1919.
Isaäk Noach remarried on 3 March 1920 in Lüdenscheid (Germany) with Carolina Slager, who was born there on 27 August 1889 and had with her two children, namely Harry in 1920 and Elisabeth Helene in 1922. They lived at Van Woustraat 172 where Isaäk runned a butchery and was selling also fine meats in his shop.
Also Rebecca Clara van West remarried: Ten months after her divorce, she married at the age of 40 in Amsterdam on 24 December 1919 the 39-year old diamond worker and commercial traveller David Sluizer, who was born on 2 December 1880 in Amsterdam as a son of Abraham Salomon Sluizer and Klara Polak.
Shortly after the wedding, they left for Antwerp, where they arrived on 30 December 1919 in the Lange Fabrieksstraat 30 but already on 3 January they moved into a house at Lange Leemstraat 299. On 8 November 1922 they arrived from Mortsel in Berchem, where they resided in the Velodroomstraat 21 and since 2 May 1924 in the Van der Meijdenstraat 3 in Borgerhout. On 4 June 1932 they moved to the Gitschotellei 156 in Berchem. No children were born from this wedlock too.
In the night of 28 to 29 August 1942 a large round-up on Jews was organized by the Germans, with help of the Belgian police. In respect to the call for the so-called “Arbeitseinsatz” in Germany, only 99 persons had responded, reason why the Germans felt the need to arrest as many as possible Jewish persons to carry them off to the assembly camp in Mechelen.
The raid was very successful; about 900 persons were arrested and at by the end of the 29th of August, the desired number of 1000 Jews to be deported had already been reached. On 1 September the 7th transport left from Mechelen to Auschswitz and the convoy arrived in Auschwitz on 3 September 1942. About 730 victims, among them also David Sluizer and his wife Rebecca Clara van West, were after arrival murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau on 4 September 1942.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, closed down and copied family registrations like the period 1913 and 1930/Salomon van West; Amsterdam Archive card Archiefkaart fot Isaäk Noach; Amsterdam wedding certificate Sluizer x Van West 1919-reg.2M-fol.32 ;Dossier of Foreigners nr. 75238 image 499-502; Felix archive, dossiers of foreigners 968#9947, 1120#1014, 10868, 968#19189 and 160180 in the name of David Sluizer; the Memorial of the Deportation of the Belgian Jews, page 23 and 24 and the two certificates of death for David Sluizer and Rebecca Sluizer-van West, dated 14 April 1953 made out by the Municipality of Berchem.