The disc sander Marcus van West, born on 18 January 1903 as the son of David van West and Keetje Cohen, married on 29 May 1929 in Deurne, Belgium Susanna Polak, who was born on 13 January 1902 in Amsterdam as a daughter of Mozes Polak and Mietje Visser. The Van West-Polak couple had two children: David in Borgerhout on 22 April 1930 and two years later, on 8 August 1933, Mozes was born in Amsterdam.
After having lived in Belgium for some time, they returned to Amsterdam on 20 June 1931 and found accommodation at Lepelstraat 63 IV-A. From there the whole family was arrested on 24 September 1942 and taken to Westerbork from where they were deported to Auschwitz on 28 September 1942.
The transports from 28 August to 12 December of the year 1942 were also referred to as the so-called Cosel transports, where the deportation train made a stopover in Cosel, located about 80 km west of Auschwitz. There, fit-for-work boys and men, usually aged 15 to 50, were forced to leave the train to be employed as forced laborers in the surrounding labor camps in Upper Silesia.
However, some deportation transports went directly from Westerbork to Auschwitz and the transport of 28 September 1942 was such a direct transport, without a stopover in Cosel. The entire transport, of 610 total deportees, arrived at Auschwitz, where only 64 boys and men between 15 and 40 years of age, fit-for-work, were selected and put to work somewhere in Auschwitz or Birkenau. Most likely Marcus van West belonged to that particular group.
All other deportees, as women, children, the elderly and the sick and infirm, were immediately murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau upon arrival on 1 October 1942, including Susanna van West-Polak and her two sons David and Mozes van West. Marcus van West, however, was 37 years old at the time, but it is unknown exactly where and when he died.
The research of the Dutch Red Cross after the war has shown and established that boys and men of the transport of 28 September 1942, between the ages of 15 and 40 should be considered to have died in Auschwitz, not earlier than 3 days after the departure from Westerbork (28 September 1942) and no later than 31 January 1943.
On this basis, the Dutch authorities have instructed the Municipality of Amsterdam to draw up a death certificate for Marcus van West, which states that he has died on 31 January 1943 in Auschwitz.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards of David van West (1863), archive cards of Marcus van West, Susanna Polak, David van West (1930) and Mozes van West (1933); the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Marcus van West, Susanna van West-Polak and the children David and Mozes van West; the publications of the research of the Dutch Red Cross of October 1952 “Auschwitz III”, deportation transports during the period 28 August 1942 to 12 December 1942, pages 65, 71, 72 and appendix IV; the Wikipedia website Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl/transport 28 Sept 1942 and the death certificate of Marcus van West, nr. 4 made out in Amsterdam on 27 October 1950 from the A-register 57-folio 2verso.