Amalia van Gelder was born in Amsterdam on 1 January 1886 as a daughter of Jacob van Gelder and Rosetta Hemelrijk. She married in Amsterdam on 3 June 1907 to the cattle trader Jacob Menko, who was born in Winterswijk as a son of the butcher Nathan Menko and Helena Strauss. The Menko- Hemelrijk couple lived in the Tuunterstraat 7 in Winterswijk, where also their two children were born: Rosette Helena on 19 May 1908 and Bernard Nathan Jacob on 21 February 1910.
On 9 April 1943 Jacob and Amalia were arrested and sent to the concentration camp Vught. After having stayed there for one month, they were both transferred to Westerbortk in the night of 8 to 9 May 1943 and housed in barrack 58. Two days later, on 11 May, they were put on transport to the extermination camp Sobibor in a transport of 1446 deportees in total. Upon arrival there on 14 May 1943, they were both, together with 1443 others, immediately murdered in the gas chambers. Of this transport was only one survivor.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card of Jacob van Gelder (1859), Peoples Registry 1874-1893 – the Jacob van Gelder family living in the Valckeniersstraat 49 Amsterdam; website openarchieven.nl/birth of Jacob Menko; website ITS Arolson/camp cards Vught for Jacob Menko and Amalia Menko-van Gelder; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Jacob Menko and Amalia Menko-van Gelder and the Wikipedia website jodentransporten vanuit Nederland. nl.