Schoontje van West was a daughter of Emanuel van West and Heintje Prins. She was born in Amsterdam on 18 February 1919. At that time, her parents still lived at Grote Kattenburgerstraat 158, but moved to Tugelaweg 73 in 1925 and later to house number 83. At the end of May 1929, Emanuel van West's family left Amsterdam for Cape Town in South Africa.
In April 1930 the family returned to Amsterdam, where Schoontje's mother Heinje Prins died on 10 August 1930 and was interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Diemen. After the death of her mother, the 11-year-old Schoontje was placed with her grandparents, Hartog and Bloeme van West, who then still lived at Blasiusstraat 121 III, but soon after moved to 2e Boerhaavestraat 13 III. Her father then moved permanently to Cape Town, but came back still one time briefly in 1931.
During the time that Schoontje van West lived with her grandparents van West, she passed her 3-year MULO diploma and then she worked as a cashier at a textile wholesale company, where she worked for 8 ½ years. After her registration with the Jewish Council, she got a job as a typist on 24 July 1942 at Waterlooplein 109, where a department of the Jewish Council was located in the Diligentia building: “Uitzending Buitenland” (Foreign departures). Here, among other things, the letters that came from the concentration camps and were sent to Amsterdam and vice versa, were coordinated. The Council provided her with an I.D. no. A-103, as a result of which she was formally, but provisionally exempted from deportations: “gesperrt bis auf weiteres”.
But on June 20, 1943, during a large-scale raid in East and South Amsterdam, secretly prepared by the Germans, the group of Jews who were still in Amsterdam was arrested, of which Schoontje van West also fell victim. 5542 people were arrested during that raid, registered at Olympiaplein, Sarphatipark and Daniel Willinkplein. They were then transported by train to Camp Westerbork.
Schoontje van West ended up in Westerbork on 21 June and was housed in barrack 58. She then made attempts to escape deportation by requesting information about her father Emanuel van West from the Amsterdam Population Register, which allegedly showed that he was the South African nationality, as well as her birth certificate, whereupon the Population Register replied that they were unable to issue such an extract.
One month later, On 20 July 1943 she was deported with the 19th and last deportation train to Sobibor. That transport with more than 2200 victims arrived in Sobibor on 23 July 1943, after which all deportees, including 24-year-old Schoontje van West, were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Sobibor.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, archive card of Bloeme van West, family registration cards of Hartog van West and Emanuel van West, archive card of Schoontje van West; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Schoontje van West; website Joods Amsterdam/Waterlooplein 109 (Dutch language only); Website oorlogsbronnen/razzia 20 Juni 1943 (Dutch language only); Wikipedia website Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl (Dutch language only).