Meijer Oudkerk was the fourth of the seven children of Benjamin Oudkerk and Klaartje van Tijn. He was born in Den Helder on 11 June 1884 and earned his living as a draper. On 19 July 1910, he married Fijtje Eltje, who was also born in Den Helder on 23 June 1885, as a daughter of Hijman Levie Elte and Saartje Salomon Beek. The couple had two daughters, namely: Klara in 1911 and Sarah in 1916; both daughters survived the Holocaust.
More marriages took place between the Oudkerk and Elte families: for example, two Oudkerk children married Elte in Den Helder on 25 March 1919: the 32-year-old Hijman with the 31-year-old Debora Elte and the 31-year-old Belo with the 28-year-old Levie Elte. That same day, however, 26-year-old Lea Elte also married 28-year-old Louis Levi from Rheden. However, the youngest of the Elte children, Joachim Elte, married a non-Jewish Johanna Helena Elisabeh Michell from Dordrecht in Leeuwarden on 17 November 1925.
In September 1909 Meijer Oudkerk left Den Helder for Amsterdam. He found living space there on the 2nd floor of 1e Oosterparkstraat 146/148 and 9 days after the marriage between Meijer and Fijtje had been concluded on 28 July 1910, Fijtje moved in with Meijer as his wife on 28 July 1910. Both their daughters Klara and Sarah were born there and the family continued to live there until May 1936. During those years Meijer Oudkerk worked as an importer of textiles and on 26 May 1936 the family moved to Velasquesstraat 13 ground floor in Amsterdam South.
The daughters Klara and Sarah were well educated: Klara became a social worker after completing 6 years of grammar school; Her sister Sarah was trained as a medical analyst after 4 years of HBS and got a job at the WG (hospital) (Wilhelmina Gasthuis).
After all Jews in the Netherlands were registered with the Jewish Council from the beginning of 1941, Sarah was “exempted from deportation because of function”: from 1 June 1942, she was given a position as laboratory chief at the N.I.Z. (Dutch Israelitic Hospital) at Nieuwe Keizersgracht 110 on behalf of the JVVVV, the Jewish Association for Nursing and Care, for which she received identification number Z-0572.
Her sister Klara also received a “Sperre” from the Jewish Council: an “exemption from deportation because of function”. From 26 November 1942, she became a surveyor and social work leader at the home care department of the Jewish Council at the H.Q. of the Council at Nieuwe Keizersgracht 58.
Meijer Oudkerk was barred because of his position at the Jewish Council as an employee of the department Social Affairs at H.Q. at Nieuwe Keizersgracht 58. His identification number was JR-1775. His wife Fijtje Elte was therefore also “exempted because of the exemption of her husband”, as a result of which the entire family of Meijer Oudkerk actually held positions for the Jewish Council.
However, when, after 20 June 1943, “the dust clouds of the secretly prepared roundup had cleared”, in which more than 5500 Jewish residents of Amsterdam were arrested and taken away for deportation, Aus der Fünten still believed again that a small “Jewish Council” had to be continued for the benefit of the many civil servants at the Zentralstelle. The goal was still: liquidation, but not too quickly.
Subsequently, 170 employees of the Jewish Council received a final reprieve from deportation through a document, the “Ausnahme Bescheinigung”. Meijer Oudkerk, Fijtje Oudkerk-Elte and his daughters Klara and Sarah also received that document. And after the last members of the Jewish Council were deported to Westerbork in September 1943 and the Jewish Council was liquidated at the end of September 1943, Amsterdam was declared “Judenrein”.
After the Oudkerk family arrived in Westerbork on 29 September 1943 and were housed in barrack 61, Meijer, Fijtje and daughter Klara were deported to Bergen Belsen on 1 February 1944. This transport included 908 victims, including a small number of Hungarian Jews who were deported to Buchenwald. Due to the horrible circumstances and hardship, Meijer Benjamin Oudkerk died in Bergen Belsen on 18 February 1945. His wife Fijtje Elte survived Bergen Belsen, but after the liberation she succumbed to the hardships she had undergone on 9 May 1945 near Tröbitz.
Klara Oudkerk survived all this, was liberated in Bergen Belsen and was eventually able to return to the Netherlands and lived in Amsterdam-Buitenveldert until after May 1962. Sarah Oudkerk, together with 773 other victims, was also deported to Bergen Belsen, but not on the 1st but on the 15th of February 1944.
Sarah survived all this and she was also able to return to the Netherlands after she was liberated in Bergen Belsen. She married Hendrik Pelser in Amsterdam in June 1945 and had two children with him; Sarah Oudkerk and Hendrik Pelser both passed in Amsterdam in 2007.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards of Meijer Oudkerk; archive cards of Meijer Oudkerk, Fijtje Elte, Klara and Sarah Oudkerk; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Meijer Oudkerk, Fijtje Oudkerk-Elte, Klara Oudkerk and Sarah Oudkerk; de publicatie “Vermoedelijk op Transport”, Masterscriptie Archiefwetenschappen Universiteit Leiden 2010/2011 door Raymund Schütz, par.3.3.8; het boek De Oorlog die Hitler won, 1947 uitgegeven door de Amsterdamse Boek-en Courant Mij. N.V., pagina 250 e.v; de website Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl/transport 1 en 15 Februari 1944.