Helena Salomons, the 11th child of Meijer Salomons and Bloeme de Paauw, was born on 26 December 1902 in Hilversum. The then 17-year-old Helena came with her parents and other family members from Hilversum to Amsterdam on 12 August 1919 and found accommodation at the address Overtoom 447, where they lived until 2 July 1928. Then they moved to the Ruyschstraat 13 ground floor, after which the Salomons family moved again on 16 April 1931 to 1st flooor of the Hunzestraat 11 in the Amsterdam River District.
When Helena Salomons had married Elias Tal, the son of Salomon Elias Tal and Saartje Voorzanger, on 24 October 1934, both moved into a house at Hunzestraat 21 on the 1st floor. Their daughter Serline Elisabeth was born there on 24 September 1937. Elias Tal was a real estate agent and diamond cutter/splitter and was born in Amsterdam on 6 September 1896.
On 7 May 1940, the Tal-Salomons family moved to Zuider-Amstellaan 43, 1st floor, and at that address Elias, Helena and Serline Elisabeth were registered with the Jewish Council, when they, and all Jews in the Netherlands, were obliged to have themselves registered there from the beginning of February 1941.
Elias Tal was “gesperrt bis auf weiteres” by the Jewish Council because of “diamond”. As a job he got, he was appointed by the Council on 18 August 1942 as a home visitor at the H.A.V. department. (Help To Departurers) at Lekstraat 81, for which he was issued identification JR-B-556 HAV. Helena Tal-Salomons and their daughter Serline Elisabeth were also (for the time being) exempted from deportation.
On 20 June 1943, during the large-scaled raid secretly prepared by the Germans, in which more than 5500 Jews in Amsterdam were arrested, rounded up and taken to Westerbork, Elias Tal, his wife Helena Tal-Salomons and daughter Serline Elisabeth were among those included too. They had the exemption stamp 60908 and 60909, located between the number series 60,000-80,000: Armament Jews ('Rüstungsjuden)' (ready-made clothing, fur, rubber raincoats, diamonds, scrap metal, rags), but were still arrested.
In the following weeks, between 27 June and 13 July 1943, Elias Tal made frantic attempts to return to Amsterdam with his family by reasons of his exemption due to "diamond", whereby various people, up to Abraham Asscher, were called in to achieve that goal. On 12 July 1943, the announcement finally came that Elias Tal was on a "list of exemptions in the diamond trade forwarded to Westerbork", after which he and his wife and daughter were discharged from Westerbork on 17 July 1943.
However, that relative freedom was not allowed to last long; Presumably at the end of September or in the first half of October 1943, the Tal-Salomons family was carried off again to Westerbork and on 19 October 1943 they were deported to Auschwitz in a transport of 1007 deportees, including 300 people from the Vught concentration camp, who had already had left there the day before.
Upon arrival at Auschwitz on 22 October, a selection immediately followed, in which approximately 350 men in the age group of 15 to 50 were selected for employment: 120 for the coal mines of Jawischowitz and 230 for clearing the rubble of the destroyed Warsaw ghetto. But first this group went into “quarantine” for four weeks. The women and children and the other men, the sick and the weak, were immediately taken to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered there by gassing on 22 October 1943.
It is not known whether Elias Tal belonged to the group employed in the Jawischowitz coal mines, or whether he was sent to Warsaw. Post-war research by the Red Cross has led to the conclusion that men who had reached the age of 16 on the day after their arrival at Auschwitz (i.e. on October 22, 1943), but were not yet 51, unless individually known otherwise, are deemed to have died in Jawischowitz or in Warsaw, not earlier than 22 October 1943 and no later than 31 March 1944.
After the war, the Dutch Authorities adopted the conclusions of the Red Cross investigations and the Ministry of Justice instructed the municipality of Amsterdam to draw up a death certificate for Elias Tal, stating that he died in Poland on 31 March 1944.
Sources included the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards of Meijer Salomons (1863) and Elias Tal; archive cards of Helena Salomons, Elias Tal and Serline Elisabeth Tal; the file cabinet of the Jewisch Council, registration cards of Elias Tal, Helena Tal-Salomons and Serline Elisabeth Tal; the archives of the Red Cross/deportation transports in 1943, edited October 1953/transport of 19 October 1943; the Wikipedia website Jodentransporten vanuit Nederland.nl/transport 19 October 1943 and the certificate of death for Elias Tal, made out in Amsterdam on 19 October 1951 no. 439 from the A-register 88-folio 75.