Levie Bierschenk, born in Rotterdam on 13 May 1919, was the 6th child of Benedictus Bierschenk and Aaltje Boas. Until his wedding with the Non-Jewish Petronella Theodora Kollen in 1941, he lived at home with his parents at Breede Hilledijk 161a in Rotterdam. According to his registration card of the Jewish Council, he lived after his marriage with wife and child – which was born in 1942 – in the Comelinstraat 15 in Rotterdam. Levie Bierschenk provided for their maintenance as fruiterer.
Levie Bierschenk was the only Bierschenk with the mention “V” (Vught) on his registration card. On 15 November 1943 he was deported with 1149 other deportees from Vught via Westerbork to Auschwitz. This was a transport of many people in the working age, men and women but less children and elderly. Among them also mixed marriages and “half-bloods”(“Mischlingen” in German).
Due to the demographic composition of ths transport, no selection followed upon arrival in Auschwitz, partly because they came from Vught. In Vught prisoners were locked in mostly as “punishment”, so with a criminal file. They were arrested individually and not in large mass raids or from places such as the Hollandse Schouwburg in Amsterdam or Loods 24 in Rotterdam deported, all of which had no file. With prisoners like these, who had a criminal record, there was a risk that someday inquiries would be made from higher authority or from the Netherlands for such an individual. That is why they could not be gassed immediately.
The transport went into quarantine for six weeks and in January 1944 the first selections took place. Of the men under age of 45 who came from quarantine, a part disappeared in forced labor in Auschwitz-Birkenau and a part to the mines of Janina, Jawischowitz and Furstengrube. For all these men, who were taken from Auschwitz – also Levie Bierschenk – after the war a collective date of death has been established by the Dutch Ministry of Justice as on 30 June 1944 in Mid Europe.
Sources among others: City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration card of Benedictus Bierschenk; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Levie Bierschenk; website wiewaswie.nl/certificate of death of Levie Bierschenk – folio 53, nr.53 made out by order of the Ministry of Justice by the municipality of Rotterdam on 28 June 1952; the wikipedia list of Jew Transports from the Netherlands and the research and additions by the curator Shoah and Hollandse Schouwburg.