The tailor Leopold Mendel was born on October 18, 1876 in Linnich, Westphalia, Germany. He married Jeanette Kain, born on June 12, 1871 in Friesheim. The devout Jewish couple ran a kosher household. Leopold and Jeanette had three children: Kurt Mendel, born on June 1, 1903, Rosa (Rosi) Mendel, born on March 26, 1906 and Klara Mendel, born on October 28, 1909, all in Dortmund-Mengede.
Leopold Mendel had an older sister: Henriëtte Mendel, who was born on January 1, 1868 in Linnich. She married the Dutch “vleeschhouwer” (fleshewer) Benjamin Klein, born on September 26, 1872 in Wildervank. The couple settled in Wildervank, where Jozua Klein was born on April 3, 1901, the first of their six children.
Jozua Klein and Rosi Mendel were first cousins. They must have gotten to know each other during family visits. On June 8, 1930, they announced that they had become engaged. More than a year later, on August 7, 1931, they married in Dortmund-Mengede. Jozua was then 30 years old, Rosi 5 years younger. The couple settled in Wildervank. Jozua followed in his father's footsteps and earned his living as a butcher. Their first daughter Rita Klein was born in Wildervank on April 26, 1933.
Because the couple did not get along well with Jozua's parents, the family decided to move to The Hague in 1935. Ingrid and Benjamin Klein were born there on September 20, 1938 and July 30, 1940 respectively at Altingstraat 124. In The Hague, Jozua opened a butcher's shop, which he had to close when he lost the price war with a competitor across the street, resulting in bankruptcy. Joshua made another unsuccessful attempt to earn a living as a traveling salesman in spices and sausage casings.
When the Nazis seized power in Germany in 1933, Rosi's parents Leopold and Jeanette Mendel thought it wise to flee to the Netherlands with their youngest daughter Klara. In the autumn of that year, they settled in Leiden in the house at Mariënpoelstraat 15. There Leopold, a salesman by profession, taught himself the tailor's trade and subsequently worked for the Jewish Orphanage at Roodenburgerstraat 1a in Leiden. To supplement their income, Leopold and Henriëtte rented out part of the house as a boarding house with “Opportunity to Dine” according to the “Ritual kitchen”. There was a great need for accommodation for Jewish students who attended the University of Leiden and needed kosher meals.
In the course of 1941 Jozua, Rosi and their three children - after the stopover in The Hague - ended up with Rosi's parents at Mariënpoelstraat 15.
Because non-Dutch Jews were no longer allowed to live in the Dutch coastal area, Rosi's parents and younger sister who had fled Germany were forced to leave the house on Mariënpoelstraat. On January 30, 1941, Klara Mendel moved to Brinkstraat 75 in Denekamp, where she found work as a domestic help. Leopold and Jeanette Mendel moved to Deventer: first to Appelstraat 31, later to Hofstraat 12. The penniless Mendels received an amount of NLG 25 from the Committee for Jewish Refugees as a contribution to the moving costs. Jeanette had the most difficulty with the exile, which taxed her nerves. To feel less displaced, Leopold and Jeanette registered on March 4, 1941 as members of the Jewish community of Deventer, from whom they would receive financial support of NLG 8.25 a week. Jozua and Rosi took over the boarding house on Mariënpoelstraat for the time being. But the family could not survive on the income from the boarding house.
As a traveling salesman, Jozua Klein moved in - for the occupier - 'suspicious' circles; after all, some were involved in the black market and illegal trade. The suspicion that Jozua was selling 'illegal meat' led to an arrest warrant.
On March 6, 1942, Jozua was arrested at home by the Leiden police. That evening Jozua was - as the police daily report expressly stated - "by order of the German police" locked up in the Zonneveldstraat station in cell A1. It is remarkable that the police guard did not enter Jozua’s real profession "traveling salesman" in the column "Occupation" of the arrest register but: "traveller". In the column “Suspected of” – where other detainees were registered with concrete alleged violations such as “bicycle theft”, “price gouging and hoarding” or “public drunkenness” – he filled in a “?”. After spending two nights in the Leiden jail, he was transferred to the Oranjehotel in Scheveningen, locked in cell no. 360 and interrogated by SS-Oberscharführer Gerhard Schmook.
Six weeks later, the detainee J. Klein was transferred for transport and deported as a "Schutzhäftling" via Camp Amersfoort to KZ Mauthausen on June 18, 1942. Fifteen days after arrival: On July 6, 1942, Jozua Klein, aged 41, died in Mauthausen. According to the Red Cross, from pneumonia. A later German source stated that he was shot dead when he attempted to escape. Rosi was widowed at the age of 36.
In Deventer, Rosi's younger sister Klara Mendel had meanwhile become acquainted with the baker's assistant Felix Klaber, who was born on March 28, 1908 in Nettetal-Breyell, Germany. On September 6, 1942, they got married in Deventer. Felix took on the Dutch nationality.
Jozua's father Benjamin Klein was arrested at the beginning of November 1942 at the Eemskade in Wildervank and deported to Westerbork. On November 16, 1942, he was deported to Auschwitz, where he was murdered three days later, aged 70. Jozua's mother Henriëtte Klein-Mendel had already passed away in Wildervank on October 25, 1940, at the age of 72.
On November 17, 1942, the doctor H. de Mooij, Zwolseweg 73 in Deventer, issued two medical certificates, in which he stated that Leopold Mendel and Jeanette Mendel-Kain were too weak to handle a 'tough journey'. The Jewish Council subsequently issued them and their daughter Klara with a ‘gray card’. With this, the Mendels hoped to get an exemption from deportation to “the East”. But when Klara and Felix Klaber nevertheless received a call to report for internment in Westerbork at the end of 1942, the newly wed couple went into hiding in Lochem-Eefde. Jacob Meijer, a police officer in Deventer and a good friend of Felix Klaber, assisted Klara and Felix in finding people who would hide them during the war. Jacob Meijer also, despite all odds, successfully removed Leopold and Jeanette from the transport train on at least one occasion, but was unable to prevent their deportation. Being a good friend, he and his wife stored personal items belonging to Felix, while the Klabers were in hiding. Though, soon after assisting with finding placements for Felix and Klara, Jacob Meijer was killed by the Nazis for his work with the resistance.
In March 1943, the net began to close around the last Jews of Leiden. Until then, Rosi had ignored urgent advice from neighbors and friends to go into hiding. Having just lost her husband, she flatly refused to split up their family and relied on a doctor-signed certificate certifying that she and her children had diphtheria, so were too ill to travel. Gerda Meijer and Emilie (Stoffels-) van Brussel, both former neighbors of Jozua and Rosi in the Mariënpoelstraat, managed to convince Rosi in the nick of time that the doctor's certificate would not protect her and her family from deportation. Rosi gave in. On March 17, 1943, Emilie and her husband Hyme Stoffels, both active in the resistance and helping people go into hiding, brought Rosi's children Ingrid and Benjamin, aged 4 and 2.5 respectively, to Oegstgeest by bicycle. At half past five in the afternoon, Rosi and her 9-year-old daughter Rita left the house on Mariënpoelstraat through the back door to walk through the Leidse Hout-park to a safe house in Oegstgeest. At ten to eight police officers showed up at the front door of Mariënpoelstraat 15 to arrest the family. Just over two hours earlier, officers from the Dutch and German police had already arrested the 51 orphans and nine employees of the Jewish Orphanage at Roodenburgerstraat 1a.
Rosi and Emilie brought Ingrid and Benjamin to Valkenburg by bicycle. There the family was split up. The children were hidden with residents in the flower-bulb region: Benjamin ended up with Gerrit and Leentje Ciggaar* in Sassenheim. Rita went into hiding with the family of Jan and Grietje van Egmond-Star*** in Rijnsburg. She was given a new surname: 'Roelofs' and, when asked, had to say that she came from Rotterdam and had become homeless during the bombing in May 1940. She went to school in Rijnsburg with the two children of her safehouse parents. Ingrid changed addresses a few times before she settled in with an elderly couple in Nieuwe Wetering. Rosi went into hiding in a luxurious nursing home in Velp where she worked as a maid. She visited her children every now and then, which was dangerous not only for her, but also for the safe house parents.
Despite the 'not on transport’-certificate obtained in 1942 as stated on the arrest warrant, Rosi's parents Leopold Mendel and Jeanette Mendel-Kain were nevertheless rounded up at Hofstraat 12 in Deventer in early 1943 and taken to Westerbork. Their names are entered in the camp records on 15 January 1943. On March 2, 1943 they were transported to Sobibór where they were killed on March 5, 1943. Leopold was 66, Jeanette 71 years old.
Their daughter Rosi Klein and her three children survived the war. The Klein family, reunited after the liberation by Emilie and Hyme Stoffels*, temporarily settled at Rijnsburgerweg 40.
In 1947, Felix Klaber and Klara Klaber-Mendel decided to emigrate to the United States with their son Eddy (1946). They applied for a visa, which was granted at the beginning of June, and sailed on the M.S. Gripsholm from Rotterdam via Göteborg to New York, where they arrived on June 20, 1947. Their second son Ralph was born there in 1948.
After the war, Rosi's brother Kurt Mendel, who had fled to the United States via Cuba in 1941, contacted her. He invited her to come over to the United States with her three children and promised to arrange housing in Miami. Rosi then booked four berths for NLG 720. on the S.S. Rijndam of the Holland-America Line. The ship left the port of Rotterdam on November 28, 1952 to arrive in New York on December 7, 1952. From there, the young family traveled to Florida to settle permanently in Miami. Kurt took care of Rosi's children like a father.
The three young children of Jozua and Rosi Klein found their way in the United States where they built up an overseas existence. In 1954, their eldest daughter Rita Klein married John Edward Lake in Miami, Florida. In 1959, their second daughter Ingrid Klein married Howard E. Roskin, born May 3, 1931 in Tarrytown and settled in Miami Beach, Florida. [Howard died on November 3, 2019 at the age of 88 in Miami. Ingrid died on January 1, 2021, aged 82, also in Miami.] In December 1963, their son Benjamin Klein married Rita A. Teitler in Florida.
The three older children of Leopold and Jeanette Mendel passed away in freedom in the United States. Their eldest son Kurt Mendel died on December 19, 1990 in Miami at the age of 87. Their second daughter and Jozua's wife Rosi Mendel died, aged 96, on February 11, 2003 in Florida. Klara Mendel, their youngest daughter, died on November 23, 2004 at the age of 95 in New York. [Klara's husband Felix Klaber had already died there on July 15, 1981 at the age of 73]
Two of Jozua's younger brothers: Emanuel Klein (1902) and Elimelich Klein (1908) and his sister Edith Klein (1907), who had married Gerson Jakobs in 1929, survived the war. The son of Edith and Gerson, born in Emmen: Benno Maurits Jakobs, was murdered in Auschwitz on 19 November 1943, aged 9. Jozua's brother Adolf Klein, born in Wildervank on October 2, 1904, also did not survive the war.
In late August 1943, Adolf Klein and Simon Eliasar were in Laundry in the French Haut Savoie, where they awaited their escape to Switzerland with the help of the "Dutch-Paris" escape network, an underground organization led by Dutchman Jean Weidner, who lived in France. Before they could make the crossing, Adolf Klein and Simon Eliasar were arrested in early December 1943 and deported from the French transit camp of Drancy to Auschwitz.
* Gerrit and Leentje Ciggaar's farm and cattle were largely destroyed by a bombardment. In 2010, Israel's Yad Vashem Institute posthumously awarded Gerrit and Leentje Ciggaar the "Righteous Among the Nations" award for hiding Jewish children, including Benjamin Klein. Yaron Schrotter, diplomat for economic affairs at the Embassy of Israel, presented the award to one of the couple's daughters.
** Emilie and Hijme Stoffels had already been awarded this distinction in 1968 .
*** Rita Klein ensured that Jan and Grietje van Egmond-Star were recognized by Yad Vashem as "Righteous Among the Nations". The award was presented in 2011 in the Portuguese Synagogue.
SOURCE REFERENCE
https://www.joodsmonument.nl
https://www.leiden4045.nl
https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/
https://www.delpher.nl/
https://www.erfgoedleiden.nl
https://dossier071.hicsuntleones.nl/
https://leiden.courant.nu/
https://stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl/
My story – The life story of Benjamin Klein (son of Jozua and Rosi Klein) / 2023
Machseh Lajesoumim - A Jewish Orphanage in the City of Leiden, 1880-1943 / Jaap W. Focke / © 2021, Amsterdam University Press
De Joodse gemeenschap in de Kanaalstreek / C. A. van der Berg & E. P. Boon / © 1992, Mr. J. H. de Vey Mestdagh Stichting.
Ingrid Roskin-Klein, Floris van Os, Jack Klaber, Nica Klaber, Ans Meijlink, Elisabeth Dempsey.