Alexander Bartels was a son of Simon Bartels and Annaatje Leeuwin. He married Margaretha van der Glas in Zaandam on 24 January 1912, a daughter of Jochem van der Glas and Elsje Bonnewit. The couple had three children, of whom their daughter Elsje has died already a few days after she was born in April 1918. The two other daughters, Anna and Elsa, have been killed during the Shoah in Sobibor.

The marriage of Alexander Bartels and Margaretha van der Glas did not last and ended in a divorce on 10 July 1930. Alexander remarried in Amsterdam 26 November 1930 Henriette Appelboom, a daughter of Mozes Appelboom and Sippora Boas. From this wedlock a daughter was born in 1932, named Nora. She too has been killed in the Holocaust.

Alexander Bartels, a ritual butcher by trade, was sent to Camp Westerbork on 6 September 1942 and the next day already on 7 September deported to Auschwitz. There he lost his life on 26 September 1942. According a message received by the Jewish Council of Amsterdam from list 19-C of the Civil Registry of Auschwitz, Alexander Bartels was succumbed of typhus.

Also Alexander’s 2nd wife Henriette Appelboom and their daughter Nora have been sent to Auschwitz on 7 September 1942, where both werd killed immediately upon arrival there on 10 September 1942.

CityArchive of Amsterdam, archive cards of Alexander Bartels, Margaretha van der Glas; website www.wiewaswie.nl – wedding of Alexander Bartels to Henriette Appelboom; file cabinet of the Jewish Council of Amsterdam, cards of Alexander Bartels, Henriette Bartels-Appelboom and Nora Bartels.