Hartog Vos was a son of Leendert Vos and Esther Porcelijn. He was born on 30 May 1914 in Amsterdam. He wa a diamond polisher and left early 1937 for Belgium, where he found living space per 1 February 1937 at Mr. Zwaaf who lived in the Marsstraat 55 in the Municipality of Berchem, who took care for his maintenance too. Hartog worked as a diamond worker with Messrs Aernouts in the Larmonièrestraat 59. In the following months, Hartog obtained his work permit and was allowed to register in the Municipality of Berchem.
Hartog’s parents, Leendert Vos and his wife Esther, and the two children Lea and Rachel lived at Bleekerijstraat 1 in Antwerp from 14 August 1913 till 1 March 1914. They returned to Amsterdam, where Hartog was born then in the end of May. Already two months later, Leendert, now with his wife and three children, left again for Antwerp where they found living space at Rolwagensrtaat 9. However, the family returned to Amsterdam again on 23 August 1916 where Leendert Vos passed away on 4 March 1919. He was interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Diemen.
When Hartog Vos left for Berchem in 1937, he was still unmarried. In the beginning he lived in the Marsstraat 55 but moved later to the Muggenberglei 58 in Deurne. Upon expiry of the validity of his I.D. on 6 July 1939, Hartog returned to Amsterdam, where he came to live with his mother, who was widowed since 1919 and had since moved to Tugelaweg 192 2nd floor, where also his brothers Hijman and Willem lived.
On 15 July 1942, Hartog married Keetje Frenk in Amsterdam, who was a seamstress, but worked then as a sales lady and she was called usually Kitty. She was a daughter of Barend Frenk and Rosetta Kadiks and was born on 17 February 1917 in Rotterdam. She has moved to Amsterdam with her parents where their first address became Dani Theronstraat 10 3rd floor in the Transvaal District of Amsterdam, but Kitty moved to Tugelaweg 129 2nd floor where her husband lived after she got married.
It is unclear when Keetje Frenk was arrested and was carried off to Westerbork. Her registration card from the file cabinet of the Jewish Council shows that she was still in Westerbork on 15 February 1943 and that she was sent to concentration camp Vught in the night of 8 to 9 April 1943, the camp where her husband already appeared to be registered six weeks earlier.
On 3 June 1944 she was deported from Vught to Auschwitz but in the end, together with other prisoners who were part of the so called Philips Command, she was liberated in Northern Germany by the Swedish Red Cross and from Sweden repatriated to Holland. On 20 September 1945 she arrived in the Walcherenschestraat 75A in Rotterdam, where her mixed-married brother Mozes Frenk lived. After she had received certainty about the fate of her husband, she remarried in 1947 in Amsterdam and emigrated to New York in 1952.
Of Hartog Vos, there is no registration card findable in the file cabinet of the Jewish Council. A camp card on his name from the archives of ITS Arolson shows that Hartog Vos has been registered in concentration camp Vught on 21 February 1943. Not known is however, how long he had to stay there, and when he was eventually put on transport to camps in Eastern Europe and where he ended up.
No doubt that Hartog Vos has been put to work as a forced labourer in some camp and he would have endured already many hardships. But at the end of the war, as Red Army troops approached, retreating Germans several times forced concentration camps inmates, mostly Jews, to “evacuate” on foot, also attempting to cover up traces of the crimes. Such marches usually resulted in death marches, took place between autumn 1944 and April 1945. It is not inconceivable that Hartog Vos was forced to participate is such an “evacuation tour” during that period and he has been succumbed or murdered during such a march on 4 February 1945 somewhere in Central Europe.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Leendert Vos, archive cards of Hartog Vos, Keetje Frenk and Barend Frenk; website Het Stenen Archief/grave Leendert Vos in Diemen; the Felix Archive of Antwerp, Dossier of Foreigners of the City of Antwerp no. 151004 and dossier 22115 from the Municipality of Berchem for Hartog Vos; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Keetje Frenk; website ITS Arolson, camp card of Hartog Vos from Vught Concentration camp and the certificate of death no. 333 , made out in Amsterdam from the A-register 98-folio 57 verso dated 27 December 1952 voor Hartog Vos