Vrouwtje van West was a daughter of Hartog van West and Bloeme van West-van West. She was born in Amsterdam on 1 May 1901. The family then lived at Valkenburgerstraat 184 from where she left for Antwerp on 13 August 1920. Vrouwtje was a seamstress by trade and was unmarried. Shortly afterwards her arrival in Antwerp, Vrouwtje left for Brussels, where her daughter Dina van West was born on 14 April 1921.
It is not known how long Vrouwtje van West and her daughter Dina lived in Brussels, but at some point they moved to Le Havre in France, where they lived for rather some time at 2, Rue du Cousture.
On 25 February 1940, Vrouwtje and her daughter Dina returned from Le Havre to Borgerhout, where they were registered at Statielei 111, but moved on 7 August 1940 to the Dodoensstraat 21. In the meantime, Michel Walvis had arrived from Strasbourg back in Borgerhout and moved in with Vrouwtje in August 1940 and lived together with her as husband and wife in a furnished room in an adulterous relation.
On 6 June 1941, the Administrator of the Immigration in Brussels inquired about Vrouwtje van West and her behavior, modesty and morality, after which the Commissioner of Police in Borgerhout reported that nothing unfavorable was known about her. She lived together with Michel Walvis as husband and wife, in a furnished quarter. He is a Dutch national, traveling salesman in clothing fabrics, currently unemployed and he was born in Amsterdam on 6 August 1889. He provides for her maintenance and they live on savings and are not supported by the Commission of Public Assistance. (C.O.O.).
Somewhere in mid-August 1942, Vrouwtje van West, her daughter Dina and Michel Walvis were arrested and carried off to Cazerne Dossin, the assembly camp in Mechelen, from where they were deported to Auschwitz on 27 August 1942 with Convoy VI (6). The transport included 1000 deportees, of which in Cosel, ±80 km west of Auschwitz, 280 men between the ages of 15 and 50 were forcibly separated from their families, had to leave the train to be put to work as forced laborers in the surrounding labor camps in Upper Silesia.
The remaining 720 persons, mainly women and a few men, were transported further to Auschwitz and arrived there on 30 August where they were all immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Among them also Vrouwtje van West and her daughter Dina van West as well as Michel Walvis.
After the war, the Court of the First Instance in Antwerp established by means of a judgment of 9 November 1956, no. 1782, that Vrouwtje van West and Dina van West died in Auschwitz between 29 August and 8 September 1942. By judgment no. 1725 of 26 October 1956 it was established that Michel Walvis also died in Auschwitz between 29 August and 8 September 1942.
Sources include the Dossier of Foreigners of the City of Antwerp no.149632/Michel Walvis; no. 150493/Hendrica van Kreeveld; Dossier of Foreigners of the Municipality of Borgerhout, no.5782/Michel Walvis; Dossier of Foreigners no’s 6055/270396/Vrouwtje van West and 6056/Dina van West; Amsterdam City Archives, family registration cards Salomon Walvis (1867) and Michel Walvis; Archive cards of Duifje Kat, Samuel Walvis, Bloeme van West-van West/Vrouwtje van West (1901), Dina van West (1921); website Family Search/birth and death Michel Walvis (1889), the Memorial of the Deportation of the Belgian Jews/Convoy 6/p.23 and the State Archives of Brussels/Dina van West/collection Give them a face.