Biography

About Salomon Zonligt

Salomon Zonligt, born in Amsterdam on 28 September 1885, was the youngest of the nine children of Alexander Zonligt and Leentje Saphier. He had another eight siblings, of whom Mozes (1874) survived the Holocaust and died in Belgium; Jacob (1875), passed before the war in 1932; Hijman (1878) survived the war too and died in Rotterdam in 1961. The others, namely Isaac, Elsje, Hartog, Levie and Abraham Aron were all killed in the Shoah. Salomon remained unmarried.

Salomon Zonligt lived in Antwerp at more than five addresses, among others in Lentestraat, Heilige Geeststraat, Nottebohmstraat but also in Borgerhout, before he returned to Amsterdam in 1914. In Belgium he worked as maker/vendor of lemonade and as electrician. In Amsterdam, where he earned his living as decorator/painter, he arrived at Rapenburg 57 and after about another ten removals in the city, he was registered on 14 February 1930 at the address Topaasstraat 1 1st floor in the Diamond district in Amsterdam, together with his also unmarried sister Elsje.

On 5 October 1942, Salomon Zonligt was deported from Westerbork to Auschwitz. This transport consisted of 2012 deportees in total, among them the first contingentof the 10.000 Jewish forced laborers from the Jewish labor camps. In Kozel, about 80 km west from Auschwitz, the train stopped and 550 men between 15-and 50 years were forced to leave the train, to be employed as forced laborers in the surrounding satellite camps of Auschwitz.

Those, who remaind in the train, were transported onwards to Auschwitz to be killed there. Salomon Zonligt – 57 years of age - belonged to this last group and on arrival there on 8 October he was killed immediately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Sources among others: City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration card and archive card of Salomon Zonligt; the Dossier of Foreigners of the City of Antwerp of Salomon Zonligt, images 833-838; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Salomon Zonligt and the Wikipedia website about the Jew Transports from the Netherlands.

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