About Mietje van Rood

Mietje van Rood, descendent of Benjamin van Rood and Sientje van Spier

By: Redactie Joods Monument

Benjamin van Rood, geboren in 1838, trouwde op 21 Juni 1865 in Hilversum met in 1836 geboren Sientje van Spier en kregen samen in totaal elf kinderen. Van de elf kinderen zijn er vijf als babies overleden – geen van hen is ouder dan 1 jaar geworden.
Van hun kinderen die de volwassenheid hebben bereikt zijn Kaatje, Neeltje, Eva, Mathilda en Susanna van Rood tijdens de Sjoa vermoord. Van Mietje is bekend dat zij de oorlog heeft overleefd.

Mietje van Rood, in 1954 a resident of Den Bosch, passed away on 3 June 1954 in Amsterdam, aged 85 and she was interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Diemen. On 18 Juni 1889 she was married in Hilversum to Hartog Groen from Den Helder, a diamond polisher, dealer in clothing and equipment supplier, but presumably divorced from him around 1922. Their four children were born in Amsterdam: Sophia on 31 Januari 1892, Sientje on 9 Maart 1894 and the twin Abraham en Benjamin on 21 Januari 1896. From the twin Benjamin died at age 13 in Antwerp on 23 May 1909, was buried in Kiel (Antwerp) but later re-buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Putte.

Daughter Sientje married 23 September 1921 in Den Haag to the coffee trader Th. Alph. J.M. Sweens from Den Bosch but they divorced on 28 August 1946.

Mietje Groen-van Rood lived on 18 JUne 1917 at St. Jacobstraat 77 in Den Haag, wehre since 1839 till 1929 the Israëlitic Old Men- and Womens Home was established.

She worked in Den Haag as linen lady but left Den Haag as divorced woman on 9 June 1922 to Berchem (Antwerp) and lived there with her still unmarried son Abraham at Campenhoutstraat 6. He married later, in 1926 in Antwerp Esther Friedman; she survived the Holocaust but the story goes that Abraham Groen was drowned in the Indian Ocean when he was on a ship to Birma to work at the railways, was sunk by the enemy.

In 1925, the residence of Hartog Groen, probably divorced around 1922, was Le Havre in France and about him nothing is furhter known. Of Mietje is further known that she and her unmarried son Abraham came from Antwerp to Amsterdam in 1917 and lived in with her brother-in-law Philip Peper (spouse of Eva van Rood) and moved to Den Haag in 1918 with her daughter Sophia.

Mietje’s daughter Sophia Groen married 11 February 1925 in Den Haag by proxy her cousin Benjamin Frank, a son of Neeltje van Rood and Jacob Frank. (Jacob Frank, a broker, aged 55, residing at Hilversum was specially authorized by authentic act for his son Benjamin - witnesses to this marriage were Jacob Philip Peper, chemist and Abraham Groen, 2^nd lieutenant of Infantry). In 1927 their daughter Myriam Netta Rosa was born in Hilversum and then they left for Bandung (Dutch East Indies) where their son Jaap Denis was born. Benjamin Frank was a Dutch clerk and had a leading position in the railways. During the war the Frank family was interned by the Japanese in 1942 and presumably by or at accusation of railway sabotage, Benjamin Frank was killed by the Japanese Kempetai. His death was registered on 9 December 1944 in Batavia.