Bertha Vogel, born on 26 November 1884 in Amsterdam, was a daughter of Mozes Vogel and Rosetta Izaaks. She married on 28 October 1908 in Amsterdam the 30-year old Michel Gompers, a son of Levie Barend Gompers and Schoontje Jacob Boas. The couple had no children.
Her unmarried sister Klara lived in with them in the Blasiusstraat 30 1st floor in Amsterdam-East. She was an inspector in a sewing atelier and on 23 March 1943 she was arrested and carried off via the Hollandse Schouwburg to Westerbork. There she stayed in barrack 62, till she was put on transport to Sobibor on 30 March. On arrival there on 2 April 1943, she was killed immediately in the gas chambers of Sobibor.
Bertha’s husband Michel Gompers survived the war. He was a diamond polisher and commercial traveller in leathergoods. It was possible that he travelled for the leathergoods factory Gompers & Co, the factory of his brother Philip Gompers. During the German occupation, Michel had this job by the Jewish Council up from 17 July 1942: he was appointed as employe administration bread supply at Nieuwe Keizersgracht 58. However, he had no “Sperre”, nor his wife Bertha Vogel, so both were not exempted from deportation.
From the registration card of Michel Gompers of the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, it is not quite clear whether he has stayed in Westerbork or not, or that he has gone into hiding or not. Clear however is that he survived the Holocaust and after the war, on 4 March 1948 was registered at the address Rijnstraat 223 2nd stock in Amsterdam. Michel Gompers passed away in Amsterdam on 5 September 1960 and he was interred in the Jewish Cemetery at Muiderberg.
The registration card of Bertha Gompers-Vogel made it quite clear that her health condition was far from ideal; her health was described as “carrier of typhoid bacilli”. She might have been seriously ill and perhaps therefore she was sent to Westerbork only the 17th of September 1943.
Another source made it clear that Bertha Vogel could no longer cope with the situation and “under pressure of the circumstances”, she ended her life on 19 September 1943 in Westerbork. She was cremated on 23 September 1943 and the urn with her ashes was placed on field U, row 2, grave 9 in the Jewish Cemetery at Muiderberg.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, archive cards of Michel Gompers, Bertha Vogel and Klara Vogel, family registration card of Michel Gompers; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Bertha Gompers-Vogel, Michel Gompers and Klara Vogel; website hetstenenarchief.nl/grave Michel Gompers; passing Bertha Gompers-Vogel/war archive of the Dutch Red Cross, collection Westerbork, application nr. 298 and the Register of Jews who are cremated in camp Westerbork, 1943-1944 and the archive of the Municipality of Westerbork, included in the archive of the Municipality of Mid-Drenthe in Beilen, inventory n 3789.