Nachman Schouten was a son of Barend Schouten and Saartje Halberstad. He was born on 22 January 1884 in Amsterdam and he was employed as a hides stipper and salter. On 4 November 1908 he married Margaretha van West in Amsterdam, who was born there on 21 August 1884 as a daughter of Benjamin van West an Rachel Vrachtdoender. The couple had four children, viz. Benjamin in 1909, Barend in 1912, Alexander Mozes in 1916 and Maurits in 1919. Only Alexander Mozes , who married in April 1942 Johanna Maria Frederika Pach, survived the Holocaust together with his wife.
After the marriage was concluded in 1908, Nachman Schouten and his wife Margaretha van West lived at Valkenburgerstraat 178 in Amsterdam until April 1942. Then they moved to Tugelaweg 89, where the family resided till in August 1940. However, one year earlier, on 29 June 1939, Nachman’s spouse Margaretha van West had passed away there at the age of 54.
Nachman Schouten then remarried on 28 August 1940 the 48-year old widow Duifje Korper, born on 16 December 1891, who had been married previously to Joseph Vogel, who however had passed away already on 25 October 1932. After Nachman’s second marriage was concluded, both moved into a house at Afrikanerplein 51 3rd floor, located in the Transvaal district of Amsterdam-East.
Even before Nachman concluded his second marriage, his unmarried son Maurits left home for an own address at the end of July 1940, viz. Swammerdamstraat 23 3rd floor in Amsterdam. The youngest son Benjamin married early June 1936 Vrouwtje Kroet and moved with here into a house at Reitzstraat 23, where on 17 May 1937 their son Nico was born and in 1938 they moved to the 3rd floor of nr. 92 Blasiusstraat. The 27-year old Barend Schouten, who had been married on 22 May 1940 the 23-year old Rebecca Buijtekand, moved into a house together then at Kraaipanstraat 69 in Amsterdam. However, all have been murdered during the Shoah.
Nachman Schouten and his second wife Duifje Korper were arrested early October 1942 during the large-scale raids the Germans had organized and carried off to Westerbork. There they arrived somewhere between 3 and 5 October and ended up in a great chaos. On 3 October 1943 also the Jewish labour camps in the Northern Netherlands were liquidated on orders of the Germans and all Jewish forced labourers then ended up in Westerbork at the same time. There they met their families or had to wait for their families in the context of the so-called “family-reunification, after which they could be deported as entire families.
Nachman and his wife Duifje were deported to Auschwitz on 9 October 1942, where upon arrival on 12 October 1942, both were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards of Barend Schouten (1854), Nachman Schouten and Joseph Vogel, archive cards of Nachman Schouten, Duifje Korper and of Barend, Benjamin and Maurits Schouten; death certificate no,.174 dated 29 June 1939 from register 7-folio 13verso for Margaretha Schouten-van West; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cares of Nachman Schouten, Duifje Schouten-Korper and of Barend, Benjamin, Maurits and Alexander Mozes Schouten.