Born in Amsterdam on 20 August 1908, the son of Isaac and Rosette van Straten, Arnold van Straten worked as an office clerk after gaining his diploma from a Hogere Burgerschool, and later became a commercial agent. He married Lea Mendelson, the daughter of a tailor, born on 2 August 1907, in 1937. The young couple set up home in a modern flat at Roerstraat 101 II. A son Isaac was born in 1938.
In November 1942, with his son Isaac, van Straten went into hiding in the forest near Ernst Gelderland while Lea found her own separate refuge elsewhere. He assumed the name ‘Peter Derkman’ and Isaac was named Pietje (Jits). They found shelter at the farm of Aalt van Wemde. However, informers betrayed their whereabouts. Isaac was moved to another safer house and his father was hidden in the woods in an underground hiding place, described as a ‘coffin’. Unaccustomed to privation, van Straten’s health quickly deteriorated. Van Wemde considered it to be a ‘bad history’ and later recalled that van Straten ‘was used to a warm room and a good life and immediately got a serious throat infection in the woods, so bad that he could hardly eat any more’ and that ‘we were very afraid that things would go wrong.’ It was fourteen days before it was possible to find him safe shelter.
At the end of November 1943 van Straten was joined in his latest underground hiding place by his protectors Aalt van Wemde and Wim Mulder, and they built themselves a bigger and better underground hut. Wim Mulder’s family supplied them with bread twice a week. Mulder and van Wemde would also visit local friendly farmers for hot meals, bringing a pan of food for van Straten who could not show himself anywhere as a Jewish man. They were joined for a time by van Straten’s 5 year old son.
In December 1944 ‘Peter Derkman’ was arrested with other members of a local resistance group and sent to prison in the Willem III barracks at Apeldoorn, where he remained for a over a month. Arnold van Straten was sent to the Amersfoort transit camp on 1 February 1945. He was then transferred to the following day to Neuengamme concentration camp, arriving on 4 February. His camp number was 706xx. He remained an inmate until the evacuation of the camp. He died during the evacuation marches near Lubeck on 26 April 1945.
See https://kevinbrownhistorian.wordpress.com/2021/08/01/a-life-in-hiding-in-the-wartime-netherlands/