Jacob Smeer was a son of Azor Smeer and Sara Cohen. Jacob married 21 March 1928 in Amsterdam Greta Baruch Henriques, a daughter of Abraham Baruch Henriques and Roosje Gerritse. However. Jacob’s wife Greta passed away 12 March 1930 and two days later, 14 April 1930, interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Diemen.
The next year, 4 February 1931, Jacob Smeer married again, now to the 22-year old ironing maid Dirkje Oosterhof from Alkmaar, a daughter of Marten Oosterhof and Trijntje Hiemstra, both from Friesland. At the wedding, Marten Oosterhof, born in September 1927, extramarital son of Dirkje Oosterhof, has been legalized whereby he received Jacobs family name and became Marten Smeer (¹). From this marriage, three more children were born, namely 21 March 1932 Selma (²), Theo in 1935 en André in 1939. They have survived the war.
(¹) From the certificate of wedding of Jacob Smeer and Dirkje Oosterhof, dated Amsterdam 4 February 1931: The groom herby declared to legalize – with permission of the mother – bride – a child named Marten Oosterhof, born here 29 September 1927. This child has been legalized already by the mother by deed of 10 October 1927, executed by the local civil servant of the Civil Registery.
(²): According the person involved, this should have been 21 March 1930 but apparently for never clarified and unknown reasons registered in the birth register of Amsterdam born at 21 March, 1932)
Jacob brought his daughter to his parents Azor Smeer and Selma Cohen so they could take care for her. Presumably, after the passing of Azor Smeer at 1 Februray 1938, she was picked up by her father and since then, she lived at home in the family of Jacob Smeer and Dirkje Oosterhof. During the war, she stayed in Friesland from 1942 till 1945.
Jacob Smeer’s profession was gluing rubber of raincoats and as such employed at Hollandia Kattenburg textile factory. According a note, made by someone of the Jewish Council at Westerbork on Jacob’s registration card, “he would have been safeguarded (“gesperrt”) from deportation because of his work at Hollandia Kattenburg for the “Wehrmacht””. Information from the Dutch Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) learned however, that since the end of 1941 he no longer was employed at Hollandia Kattenburg. Still, he too was fetched and arrested for “sabotage” at his home address at the same time the Jewish employees of Hollandia Kattenburg were arrested by the Germans 11 November 1942.
Via Euterpestraat and Adema van Scheltemaplein in Amsterdam he ended up in the penitentiary prison at Scheveningen 12 November. After being sentenced to death in an Utrecht prison by the Germans, he was sent to Camp Amersfoort 11 January 1943 with seven other prisoners. After also being imprisoned for some months in concentration camp Vught he was sent to Camp Westerbork 24 May 1943 as a “penal-case” and was locked up in the penal-barack 67. The next day, 25 May he was deported to Sobibor in a so-called “penal transport” and upon arrival there 28 May 1943 immediately killed.
City Archive of Amsterda, archive cards of Jacob Smeer and Dirkje Oosterhof; website www.wiewaswie.nl, marriage of Jacob Smeer and Greta Baruch Henriques and Jacob Smeer and Dirkje Oosterhof ; website www.akevoth.org/mokum/burialpermits Greta Smeer; The Dutch Red Cross, war aftercare and the NIOD; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration card of Jacob Smeer and personal additions from the daughter of Jacob Smeer, placed by the editors of the Jewish Monument.