Clarence Simons was a daughter from the second marriage of Levy Simons to Carolina Duparc from Leeuwarden. His first spouse, Sara Sarluis, passed on 25 Februaary 1855 after the birth of her fourth stillborn baby on 27 January 1855 and Levy remarried in July 1856. Clarence Simons was born in Den Haag on 22 June 1859. She had two brothers, Moses and Abraham, both born in 1857.
Clarence Simons married on 10 June 1884 in Den Haag Gabriel Jacob Hartogensis, who was born on 9 July 1862 in Tilburg as the first of the six children of Jacobus Jeronimus Hartogensis and Sophia van Ham. Clarence and Gabriel had one son, named Jacques Gabriel, who was born on 21 April 1885 in Den Haag.
Her husband Gabriel Jacob however passed away on 31 December 1938; her son Jacques Gabriel survived the war and passed in Den Haag on 14 May 1968. Clarence self was arrested in her domicile Frankenslag 99 in the State Quarter of Den Haag in the late autumn of 1942 and was still present in Westerbork on 3 December 1942.
Notes on her registration card of the Jewish Council shows that she had presented three testimonies/certificates; the most plausible reason must have been: escape from deportation because of mixed marriages. Her son was mixed married and due to that “gesperrt” - exempted from deportation by the Jewish Council. Mixed marriages and exemptions from deportation also occurred in the Hartogensis families. On 29 December 1942, Clarence Simons received a so-called “Persönliche Rückstellung Aus der Fünten” (a personal exemption by Aus der Fünten), because of a descendency research, which was mentioned on her registration card as “AO RAF”.
Whether all this has led to the cancellation of deportation of Clarence Hartogensis-Simons to the concentration- and extermination camps in the East, is unknown. Clarence died in Camp Westerbork on 24 January 1943, aged 83 and she was interred on 27 January 1943 in Assen. After the war, she was reburied at the Jewish Cemetery in Wassenaar in 1946.
Sources include the Municipal Archive of Den Haag, family registration card of Clarence Simons; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Clarence Hartogensis-Simons and of Jacques Gabriel Hartogensis; the death certificate of Gabriel Jacob Hartogensis made out in Den Haag nr. 2 of 2 January 1938 and additions of a visitor of the website