Abraham de Wilde and Sophie Elias Snuijf got married on November 11, 1903. After their marriage, the diamond-cutter Abraham and Sophie Elias Snuijf moved into a house at 2e Jan Steenstraat 117, Amsterdam. Two children were born to them there. In 1906 they moved to 2e Jan Steenstraat 85, where two more children were born.
The youngest child, Judith, died before reaching the age of two. One of the children later remembered that when she was three years old, and the family was seated around the dinner-table, she had said, ‘I can hear Juultje crying’. At the time she had thought it odd that her parents merely exchanged glances and did not go to the baby. Later she realized that Juultje must already have been dead by then.
Opposite the house at Jan Steenstraat was a company that hired out carriages, with horses. On Friday evenings the carriages were cleaned, and the coachmen all had red faces. The children stood around watching – and waiting for their father, who would bring them some petit fours if business had gone well.
In 1913 the family moved to Linnaeusparkweg in Watergraafsmeer (‘de Meer’), which was still a separate municipality then. There were meadows opposite their house. Oosterpark with its bandstand was an outing for which the family would sometimes dress to the nines, wearing their best suits, long dresses and large hats. Abraham also often went for walks with his neighbour in Oosterpark, and the two men would have animated political discussions. One day, Abraham came home very late from Oosterpark. He and the neighbour had been so engrossed in their discussion that they had not noticed the park gates being shut. They had had to climb over the fence to get out.
The De Wilde family was not observant. They did not go to shul any more, although the children did attend Jewish school. One of the children later recalled that the Shehechianu prayer always ended: ‘lazer de man in zee, amen’ (‘Chuck the man into the sea, Amen’); in fact it ends: ‘… lazman hazeh, amen’).
After the 1929 stock market crash, the diamond trade did poorly. The family moved to Waalstraat. And once the children had left home, in 1932, Sophie and Abraham went to The Hague, where they moved in with Sophie’s eldest sister, the unmarried Judith Snuijf: first in Malakkastraat and later in Tomatenstraat.
Sophie and Abraham became grandparents, and Abraham in particular had endless patience with his grandchildren. Photographs still exist of Sophie and Abraham with their grandchildren in Lochem and in the cane beach-chairs on Scheveningen beach, just before the war.
In the war, one of the children found an address where Abraham and Sophie could go into hiding. They refused to use it, however, because they did not want to endanger the lives of the host family’s children. ‘I have had a wonderful life’, Abraham is quoted as saying. After Sophie, Abraham and Judith were picked up in 1942 and taken to the assembly point Hollandsche Schouwburg, the children tried unsuccessfully to get them freed on medical grounds. On arrival in Westerbork, Abraham had five guilders in his pocket, which was confiscated by the officials of the Lippmann-Rosenthal Bank. On 23 October 1942, Sophie, Abraham and Judith were transported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered on 29 October.
Addition of a visitor of the website
In addition, a Jokos file (number 1655) on this family is at the Amsterdam Municipal Archive. Access is subject to authorization from the Stichting Joods Maatschappelijk Werk.The Jokos file reveals that a claim was lodged for compensation for valuables surrendered to the Lippmann-Rosenthal looting bank (L-claim, number 12984/15774).