Lena van West was the youngest of the nine children of Hartog van West and Bloeme van West. She was born in Amsterdam on 16 May 1916 and she started working as a dressmaker. On 18 October 1939 she married Mozes van Kleef, who was a wallpaperer and upholsterer by trade. Mozes was born on 16 July 1915 in Amsterdam as the son of Salomon van Kleef and Saartje van Dam. The couple had no children.
Before her marriage, Lena van West lived at Tweede Boerhaavestraat 13, 3rd floor, with her mother and Mozes van Kleef at Rapenburgerstraat 35 ground- and 1st floor. After they were married, they moved into living quarters at Amstellaan 11, 3rd floor, with Michel Coronel's family, but moved on 18 July 1941 to Waverstraat 85, 3rd floor.
Mozes van Kleef, however, was already called up in the spring of 1942 for employment in the Jewish Labor Camp De Vecht near Dalfsen. When all labor camps were liquidated by the Germans on 3 October 1942, Mozes van Kleef and all other forced laborers ended up in Westerbork. From there he was deported to Auschwitz on 23 October but it is almost certain that he was among the 170 men aged between 15 and 50 who had to leave the train in Cosel to be put to work as forced laborers in the surrounding labor camps in Upper Silesia . He finally died on 31 March 1944 somewhere in Mid-Europe.
Lena van West, on the other hand, was appointed by the Jewish Council in September 1942 as a Youth Leader at the Central Commission of Education in the building of the Jewish association for social youth work Beis Jisroeil at Plantage Parklaan 9, which was an office of the Jewish Council during the war. Lena was not “officially exempted from deportation”, but because of her position she did have a Jewish Council ID nr.B-1626.
As a result, she was able to continue her work as a youth leader until she was also arrested and carried off to Vught concentration camp in the night of 13 to 14 May 1943. She was registered there as a seamstress and stayed there until 15 November 1943. On that date a direct transport departed from Vught to Auschwitz with 1149 deportees, including Lena van Kleef-van West, which arrived there on 18 November 1943.
The entire transport was first quarantined for 6 weeks upon arrival in Auschwitz camp. Selections and employment followed in January 1944, but it is not known whether Lena van Kleef-van West was then still employed, or whether she was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau immediately after the quarantine period. Her exact date of death is not known, which is why the Dutch authorities after the war determined, partly on the basis of testimonies of survivors and research, that Lena could no longer be alive after 31 January 1944.
The Municipality of Amsterdam was then instructed to draw up a death certificate for Lena van Kleef-van West, which states that she died on 31 January 1944 in the vicinity of Auschwitz.
Sources include Amsterdam City Archives, family registration cards of Bloeme van West, archive cards of Lena van West and Mozes van Kleef; residence card of the Amsterdam Amstellaan 11 III; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Lena van Kleef-van West and Mozes van Kleef; website ITS Arolson/camp card Vught of Lena van Kleef-van West; the Wikipedia website Jewish transports from the Netherlands; Publication of the Dutch Red Cross from October 1943 – Auschwitz part IV, deportation transports in 1943 and the death certificate for Lena van Kleef-van West, no. 100 dated 31-08-1951 from the A-register 85-folio 18v, drawn up at Amsterdam.