Rachel Elisabeth Italiaander (Chelly) was the eldest daughter of Isidor Italiaander and Esther Stad. She was born in 1929 but only in 1939 her sister Elisabeth Julia was born and in 1941 her brother Marcus Jozef followed. By hiding, the two youngest children survived the Holocaust.
Also Rachel Elisabeth was in hiding, whilst she and her sibs had also a so-called “Sperre”, an exemption from deportation. Their mother Esther Italiaander-Stad had a job as shop-assistant in the confectionery of her father-in-law Marcus Italiaander, located in the Van Musschenbroekstraat 1a in Amsterdam which was designated as a so-called “Joods Lokaal”( a Jewish Business). As a result of the exemption of their mother, also they were exempted from deportation until further notice.
However, on 26 May 1944 the 15-year old Rachel Elisabeth was picked up and carried off to Westerbork. It is not clear from available data why she was arrested. In Westerbork, she was not treated as a “penal case” and was not accommodated in the penal barrack 67 but in barrack 35, which was known as the “orphanage”. The fate of her parents, who already one year earlier, in the summer of 1943 had been murdered (which became known only after the war), could not be known to her then in barrack 35.
On 3 September 1944, she was deported with the last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz, where she on arrival ended up in the concentration camp. There, in the course of September or October she has lost her life there. Her exact date of death is not known. Therefore, the Ministry of Justice has ordered the City of Amsterdam after the war to draw up a certificate of death for Rachel Elisabeth Italiaander, in which has been established that she has died in the surrounding of – or in Auschwitz on 31 October 1944.
Sources among others: City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Isidor Italiaander, archive cards of Isidor Italiaander, Esther Stad, Rachel Elisabeth Italiaander; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Isidor Italiaander, Ester Italiaander- Stad and of Rachel Elisabeth, Elisabeth Julia en Marcus Jozef Italiaander and certificate of death A96-folio 8-akte 471 d.d. 27-6-1952 for Rachel Elisabeth Italiaander.