Leonard Henriques de la Fuente was the youngest son of Jacob Henriques de la Fuente and Benvenida Engers. He was born in Amsterdam on 28 March 1902 and he was a musician by profession, and more specific, a pianist in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Leonard married on 17 December 1925 in Amsterdam Hendrika de Vries, who was born on 19 November 1901 as a daughter of Meijer de Vries and Mietje van Coeverden. The couple had two children, namely Benvenida in 1926 and Mietje in 1928.
Two years after Leonard and Hendrika got married, they took in Leonard's father, Jacob Henriques de la Fuente, who had become widowed on 4 February 1924, but still remained living at Gerard Doustraat 184 1st floor, the house where he resided since April 1892. However on 6 October 1926 Jacob was adopted at first in the family of Nathan van Delft, who was married to Jacob’s daughter Sophie Henriques de la Fuente but five months later, Jacob moved in permanently with his son Leonard.
Per 16 July 1942 Leonard got a function at the Jewish Council as a controller at the department of bread supply and as a result of that, he was provisionally exempted from deportation, just like his wife Hendrika and both his daughters. The eldest, Benvenida had a job at the Expositur: she was working there as lunch lady. Hendrika, previously piano teacher, had also a “Sperre” because of function of her spouse, but per 16 December 1942 she too was employed as “fellow worker at the Jewish Council”. Meantime her husband “had left for Germany already”.
“Depart to Germany” meant that Leonard Henriques de la Fuente was deported to Auschwitz on 2 November 1942, after being arrested during the large raids of early October 1942 and arrived in Westerbork somewhere between 3 and 5 October. The simultaneous arrival of all forced laborers from the liquidated Jewish labor camps in the Netherlands also caused chaotic scenes in Westerbork; where Leonard was housed after entering the camp is unknown.
The transport of 2 November 1942 included a total of 954 deportees. True enough, a stop was made in Kozel, ±80 km west of Auschwitz, where 260 boys and men between the ages of 15 and 50 were forced to leave the train to be deployed as forced laborers in the surrounding labor camps in Upper Silesia. Transport lists from the Auschwitz archives indicate, however, that Leonard Henriques de la Fuente was indeed part of that transport, but it is not certain whether he belonged to the Kozel group of 260 men or whether he arrived in Auschwitz on ±5 November 1942 and had to work there in forced labour.
After the war, the Dutch Authorities have anyway established, also based on testimonials of survivors, that Leonard Henriques de la Fuente no longer could be alive after 30 April 1944. The Municipality of Amsterdam then was commissioned to draw up a certifcate of death for him, in which was stated that he has died somewhere in Mid Europe on 30 April 1944.
Leonard's wife, Hendrika de Vries, was arrested together with her daughters Benvenida and Mietje on 24 July 1943 and deported to Westerbork. Their exemptions had been cancelled and in Westerbork they ended up in one of the three penal barracks, penal barracks 65. Yet it took until 31 August 1943 until Hendrika and both her daughters were deported to Auschwitz. There they were murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau immediately after their arrival on 3 September 1943.
Sources include the City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards of Leonard Henriques de la Fuente, archive cards of Leonard Henriques de la Fuente, Hendrika de Vries and the daughters Benvenida and Mietje, Jacob Henriques de la Fuente (1868) and Nathan van Delft; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Leonard Henriques de la Fuente, Hendrika Henriques de la Fuente-de Vries and the daughters Benvenida and Mietje and the certificates of death made out in Amsterdam nr. 404 dated 1 Feb 1952 from register A93-folio 69v for Leonard Henriques de la Fuente, nr.215 of 19 July 1951 from register A82-folio 37v for Hendrika Henriques de la Fuente-de Vries, nrs.512 and 513 of 12 July 1951 from register A81-folio 87v for Benvenida and Mietje Henriques de la Fuente.