Elizabeth IJer was a daughter of Abraham IJer and Kaatje Stad. 24 November 1920 she married the photographer Jacob Haagman in Rotterdam, a son of Louis Haagman and Mietje Ossendrijver. The couple had three children: Mietje in 1921, Kaatje in 1924 and Anna in 1926. Kaatje however died alreadty in January 1925 and Mietje and Anna were killed in the Shoah.
23 November 1928 the marriage of Jacob and Elizabeth ended in a divorce and Elizabeth remarried 3 September 1930 in Rotterdam the fruiterer Emanuel van Leeuwen, a son of Abraham van Leeuwen and Anna Ossendrijver. They lived then at Josephstraat 38a in Rotterdam. In August 1931, their son Abraham was born.
After the divorce, the children from the 1st marriage of Elizabeth IJer and Jacob Haagman, stayed with their mother and were included in the Van Leeuwen family. Both Haagman girls were killed in the Shoah, just as the other members of the Van Leeuwen family.
Between 3 and 5 October 1942 the Van Leeuwen family and both the Haagman girls were registered in Camp Westerbork and put on transport to Auschwitz 6 November 1942. This transport stopped at Cosel, ±80 km west from Auschwitz where 110 men and boys were “unloaded” from the train to work in the subcamps of Auschwitz in the region there. Presumably Emanuel van Leeuwen belonged to that group; his date of death was established eventually as 31 March 1944 “somewhere in Mid-Europe”.
Those, who remained in that train, were sent to Auschwitz. Elizabeth IJer, her son Abraham van Leeuwen and her children Mietje and Anna Haagman were killed there immediately upon arrival 9 November 1942.
City Archive of Rotterdam, family registration cards of Abraham IJer, Elizabeth IJer, Jacob Haagman and Emanuel van Leeuwen; register of deaths, cert. 745 dated 1951 of among others Elizabeth van Leeuwen-IJer; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Emanuel van Leeuwen, Elisabeth van Leeuwen-Yer (Elizabeth van Leeuwen-IJer), Abraham van Leeuwen en Miete and Anna Haagman and an addition of a visitor of the website.