Jochem and Anna

We start our story somewhere in the Dutch 'Golden Age', maybe at the beginning of the end of that golden era, 1672: 'the year of disasters' when the republic was at war with almost all of her neighbours. About that time Jochem Jochanan David and Anna Nehemia were born, the oldest know ancestors of our Goudsmit-family.

Were they born in the Netherlands? Could be, but they might been born in Germany, Poland or another East/Middle-European country. Between 1650 and 1660 a Group of Ashkenazi Jews settled in Rotterdam. It is possible that the parents of Jochem and Anna were part of that Group and they themselves were born in Rotterdam but it's equally possible that they were born elsewhere and migrated with their parents to Rotterdam. In any case, the oldest mention of the, then married couple Jochem Jochanan David and Anna Nehemia is the birth of their first child in Rotterdam.

Although there were Jewish people in the Netherlands since the middle ages, the large communities originated much later. First at the start of the 16th century, the Sepharic or Spanish Jews fleeing the notorious Spanish Inquisition, then a large group of Ashkenazi or High-German Jews fleeing the 30 years war in Central Europe.

Jochem and Anna's first child was Marianna Jochem, born in 1702. After that they moved to Amsterdam and had 3 sons:

• Salomon Zalman Jochem (1708)
• Hartog Jochem (1709)
• Salomon Shalom Jochem (1717)

That's about all we know of Anna and Jochem. Jochem died before the wedding of Hartog in 1734, Anna was still alive at the wedding of Shalom in 1740.

Although the Jews in general were free to settle in the Netherlands they weren't exactly equal to the Dutch citizens. They were relatively safe and were free to practice the Jewish Faith but many professions were not open for Jews. Earning a living was pretty hard, the majority was poor and Jochem and Anna were probably no exception, living off street trade, welfare and begging.

Salomon Shalom Jochem

What happens next with the Jochem Jochanan family? Marianne marries Heijman Praag Kerpel and dies young, somewhere around 1730. There are no known children.

Salomon Zalman marries Rachel Cohen. They'll have 2 children who will start the Weltevreede family line (a part of which will move to London).

Hartog marries Engeltje (=little angel) Cohen. They have 1 child, move back to Rotterdam and start the Eijl family.

Shalom Jochem finally, that's our ancestor. He marries Marianne Levie and has two sons:

• Jochem Shalom (1752)
• Nehemia Shalom (1759)

Those two will start the Goudsmit family.
(Incidentally, years later the Weltevreede and Goudsmit families will link up again as two Goudsmits marry Weltevreedes.)

It is now the second half of the 18th century. Amsterdam is part of the Republic of the 7 Provinces, Willem the 4th is 'Stadhouder' (a sort of president) but will die in 1751.

The name Goudsmit

Jochem Shalom is naturalized in 1809 and takes on the name Goudsmit (=goldsmith). His brother Nehemia does the same in 1826. Why Goudsmit? I don't really know. Were their ancestors goldsmiths? Is it their ambition? In any case, Jochem and Nehemia are buyer/sellers of old clothes, so still the street trade. Both are living in the Uilenburgerstraat, in the heart of the Jewish quarters in Amsterdam. The living conditions were of course different from modern times but in the Jewish quarters everything was a bit worse. Small and poorly maintained housing and bad hygienics. As an example a picture of the same Uilenburgerstraat, taken at the start of the 20th century.

Jochem and Nehemia both start a family. Jochem marries Marianne Prins and Nehemia his bride in Sara Loggem. Jochem has 2 sons and within a few generations their descendants form a large Goudsmit-family.

Nehemia, our ancestor, has not less than 5 sons: the name Goudsmits shall live on.

Tall David

An intriguing detail in the records of Jochem and Nehemia is that both, at their funeral, are called 'great-grandson of Tall David'. Their father also is mentioned as 'grandson of Tall David' at his funeral. Who this Tall David was we don't know yet but the fact that he is mentioned three times indicates that it was a prominent figure.

The sons of Nehemia

Nehemia Shalom Goudsmit lives at the time of the demise of the Dutch Republic. He marries in 1782 with Sara Benjamin Loggem. When the Frech under Napoleon invade the Netherlands in 1795 his fifth and last child is just born. Together they become citizens of the Bataafse Republiek (a French puppet state), the French Empire, after the fall of Napoleon The United Kingdom of the Netherlands (with Belgium and Luxemburg) and finally the Kingdom of the Netherlands under king Willem I. Whether a lot of these revolutions actually affect the daily life in the Jewish ghetto remains to be seen but in the ends the changes a certainly for the good of the fate of the Jews.

The Nehemia Shalom Goudsmit-family finally consists off:

• Salomon Nehemia Goudsmit (1782)
• Levie Liepman Nehemia Goudsmit (1785)
• David Nehemia Goudsmit (1788)
• Wolf Nehemia Goudsmit (1791)
• Levie Nehemia Goudsmit (1794)

In 1826, the year Nehemia is naturalized and takes on the name Goudsmit he lives at Uilenburgerstraat nr. 100 with his 5 sons. All his sons are married by then and have kids. Then imagine a typical workman's house at that time: a living room, a kitchen and a 'bedstee' (a bed built in a closet) and it isn't hard to imagine that daily life at that time took place mostly on the streets outside.

Of his sons Levie Liepman is the only one can't raise children. His only child dies in her first year. The other sons start their own Goudsmit-families with known descendants up to the 20th century. We're gonna look at the family of the son who is our ancestor: David Nehemia Goudsmit.

David Nehemia Goudsmit

David Nehemia marries Aaltje Goudkop on 3 january 1813. The French just had left the Netherlands and Willem Frederik will set foot on Dutch soil at the end of the year to become the first king of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Although the French rule is over they left a legacy that profits the Jews. The motto of the French Revolution is Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood and because of that the Jews acquired full civil rights and so access to all jobs available. Of course in the first years it's a paper equality but as the years go on, and particularily after 1850 when the Dutch economy is growing a lot of Jewish families will escape the poverty that haunted them for so long.

David Nehemia by the time of his marriage is registered as 'Colporteur Kijzerlijke Looterij', let's say a seller of lottery tickets. He has 8 children, but 4 die young. His wife also dies young, in 1826.

The children who will start families are:

• Nehemias David Goudsmit
• Mozes David Goudsmit
• Isaac David Goudsmit

The latter, Isaac David, is our ancestor.

Isaac David Goudsmit

Isaac is cardboardworker and later diamondcutter. What a cardboardworker is exactly I'm not sure but it looks that he has a regular job and isn't a street trader any longer as his ancestors were. He marries in 1845 Klaartje Zadoks. They get 5 children, 2 die young so in the end the family consists of:

• David Goudsmit (1849)
• Maurits Goudsmit (1855)
• Nehemia Goudsmit (1859)

Maurits is a draftsman and Nehemia an office clerk. The Goudsmits are working their way up to the middle class.

David Goudsmit and Flora Krijn

David Goudsmit is a merchant and a broker. His trade his women's clothing. He lives at the Prinsengracht, in the van Eeghemstraat and in the Amstelveenseweg. That's more or less high middle class-on their way to upper class. In 1857 he marries Flora Krijn, daughter of Lehman Krijn and Cornelia Cohen-Eljon (here the name Flora enters the Goudsmit family). Together they have the following children.

• Catherine (Kathe) 1876)
• Isaac (1879) (overlijdt jong)
• Lehman (Leo) (1880)
• Cornelia (1882)
• Rebecca (Regina) (1885)
• Julius (1889)

Julius is born at 2 march 1889. Less than 2 months later another little boy is born in Austria. This Adolf will have a devastating influence on the Goudsmits and the other Jews in Europe.

Meanwhile David dies in 1897 at the age of 50. Flora Krijn is left behind with 5 children (Isaac only lives a half year). She undoubtedly will have the support of her oldest daughter Catherina who is 21 by then.

Catherina (Kathe) marries lawyer and prominent figure in the Jewish community Isidore Hen, another sign that the Goudsmits are doing well. She and her husband will leave for the Netherlands Indies in 1908 where Isidore will become the leader of the Jewish community, the local cantor and chairman of the Jewish council.

Leo takes over his father's business. He marries the catholic Cornelia Verhoeven and is the first to marry outside his faith. If you look at the pictures of that time the Goudsmit family had no problems welcoming the catholic Cornelia (Corrie) in their family. With the Verhoeven family things were different. Contact was broken with Corrie and it took until the 1950's when oldest brother Jan came over from the USA to restore the family relations. Leo and Corrie will have two children, Hans and Flora

Julius follows Leo's example and also marries a non-Jewish girl, Johanna Huetinck. They also move to the Netherlands Indies were Julius is a salesman.
They have 3 daughters: Floor, Mia and Gien

Corrie marries Willem Kruyder, a mechanical engineer and also not Jewish and wil live most of her live in Amsterdam. Rebecca, at least that's her official name, throughout her life she will be called Regina or Gien, doesn't marry and will stay all of her life in Amsterdam.

Mother Flora Krijn experiences the marriages, the birth of all her grandchildren and even 2 great grandchildren. In 1915 she undertook the trip to the Netherlands Indies to visit Kathe and Isidore. In 1933 she dies, 84 years old.

After 2 centuries of hard struggle, the Goudmits have finally earned a place in the Amsterdam white collar community. They came from the poor Jewish quarters, living in small houses, living off welfare, street trade and begging. They are well-doing now, having good jobs, nice houses, good education for their children. And now that is all to be destroyed in 5 years German nazist hatred.

1940-1945

Genealogic research regarding Jewish families in the Netherlands is a depressing activity. From the 1700 on the Goudsmit family tree prospered. I was entering more and more families in my database. The family tree branched out quickly, the brothers Jochem and Nehemia each starting a branch. Soon it is hard to keep track of who is who and a child of whom. But then from 1940, it almost all ends. Time after time you fill in a death date in the 1940's with place of death Sobibor or Oswiecim (Auschwitz). Whole familes are murdered and in the end only a handful of individuals remain.

One of them is of course my grandma, otherwise I could not have written this story. But the children of David and Flora remarkably survived the war allmost intact, be it scarred by camp memories. A few causes can be named.

First of all, most of them married non-Jewish spouses. That didn't prevent them from having to wear a yellow star but it made them a less prominent target. Secondly they didn't live in the Jewish quarters and most of them didn't live in Amsterdam, the most dangerous place to be.

Kathe however, was married to Isidore Hen, a prominent Jew who introduced zionism in the Netherlands Indies. She, her husband and a few of their children returned to the Netherlands in the 1930's and lived in The Hague when the war broke out. Despite the fact that they and their children were considered full Jews they all survived the war. But in the list of survivors of the concentration camp Theresienstadt there is mentioning of a "Mr. Isidore Hen and spouse". So they were sent to the camps but survived. Isisdore died in 1947, Kathe in 1950.

My great grandfather Leo didn't have to experience any of the horrors of the war because he died in 1938. According to family stories he was a very superstitious man. Early in his life someone had predicted that he would die young so when he got ill in 1938 he simply gave up life. His wife, Corrie Verhoeven, was catholic. At the time of the war she was in the Netherlands Indies to visit Hans, her son. They ended up in a Japanese camp but survived the war. Daughter Flora married Jo Siezen, not Jewish, and spend the war years in relative safety in Bussum and De Steeg. Remarkable fact: during the war she had to house a few German officers.

Corrie Goudsmit and Willem Kruyder lived in Amsterdam through the war. They both survived and Corrie died in 1960 in Amersfoort.

Julius Goudsmit returned to Holland in the 1920's and live in The Hague. He owned a grocery store when the war broke out. He had to wear a yellow star, his grocery store was shut down by the Germans in 1942 but he survived, together with his wife and 3 adult daughters (and first grandson). At the end of the war their house was bombed by the RAF in a raid against V2-sites near The Hague. They only just escaped.

And finally Regina, aunt Gien, born Rebecca Goudsmit. She worked for a publisher and visited schools in the region to promote schoolbooks. She lived in the Euterpestraat 173, which was not a good place to live because in the same street the headquarters of the SD, the German secret police.was housed. Gien was caught during a razzia in 1942, sent to Auschwitz and murdered there on 26 september, at the age of 56.

Aunt Gien is the only victim of the David Goudmit-Flora Krijn family. Other families were not so 'fortunate'. What about the brothers of David? Maurits the drafstman and Nehemia the office clerk? Maurits' only son, Jacques Goudsmit, married Sophia Salomons. They both were killed in Sobibor in 1943. And Nehemia? He had two children, Catherina and Jacques David. What happened to Catherina is not clear, but Jacques David was murdered in Sabensdorf, in 1943.

DA lot of the Goudsmit families were forced to take the trip back to the lands their ancestors came form and underwent the fate their ancestors so succesfully fleed from.

Here's an in memoriam for all Goudsmits, descendants of Jochem and Anna, murdered by the Germans. The list may not be complete and doesn't yet include descendants who didn't no longer wear the Goudsmit name.

The Goudsmits after the war

The grandchildren of David Goudsmit and Flora Krijn all survived the war. Descendants live in the Netherlands, in Canada, in Australia and Israël. But only a few of them actually are named Goudsmit. That's Paul, the son of Hans, brother of my grandmother and his children.

But there are survivors in other families. There's a branch in the USA, who emigrated before the war, some branches in Israël and of course in the Netherlands.

So ends a small history of our Goudsmit family. A story of three and a half ages, full of suffering and hardship often too hard to imagine for us in this comfortable world. But undoubtedly also full of joy and love and Jewish wit.

A story that started with a handful of families fleeing to the Netherlands, probably walking, with some handcarts with a few possessions, hoping for a better life. A story that ends with me, typing 'Goudsmit' in the Facebook search and wondering which ones are distant relatives.

Utrecht, 2012

Jelle Hoogland, son of Marijke Siezen, grandson of Flora Goudsmit, great grandson of Leo Goudsmit , 2nd great grandson of David Goudsmit, 3rd great grandson of Isaac Goudsmit, 4th great grandson of David Goudsmit, 5th great grandson of Nehemia Goudsmit, 6th great grandson of Salomon Jochem, 7th great grandson of Jochem Jochanan David, 8th great grandson of Tall David!