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Coenraad Herman van Es, Schoontje van Es-van de Rhoer and Carolina Mathilda
Coenraad Herman van Es was born in 1876 as one of seven children of
Salomon Abraham Levie van Es and Carolina van der Wijk. In 1904 he
married Eva van de Rhoer (born 24th of March 1875, daughter of Abraham
van de Rhoer and Matje Glazer and was the sister of a number of the Van
de Rhoers in Meppel).
They had two children: Carolina Mathilda (born on the 21th of August
1905) and Abraham (born on the 10th of December 1908). Eva died in 1930
and two years later Coenraad remarried, this time to Eva’s younger
sister Schoontje, born on the 18th of July 1889. The church- and the
civil ceremony took place on the same day, 15th of July 1932. They had
no children.
Coenraad van Es, his wife Schoontje and daughter Carolina lived at 5
Steenwijkerstraatweg. Carolina worked as a secretary for Brocades &
Stheeman.
When, at the beginning of 1942 this was no longer possible, she got a
job as secretary with the Jewish Council. Her brother Abraham (Bram)
had already moved to work and live in Amsterdam.
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Bram van Es played in the football team Alcides 4 in 1928. This picture
was taken on the playing field ‘Weerdstraat’. Bram stands on the left in
the middle row.
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Bram van Es (standing 4th
left) played soccer in one of the adult teams of Alcides in 1925. This
picture was taken on the playing field 'Weerdstraat'.
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Coenraad van Es was well known in Meppel. Not only was he well know as
a teacher, but also as a committee member of a number of associations,
such as: the Dutch Association to Abolish Alcoholic Drinks, The
Association for Infant Food and Clothing, the Red Cross, Precare, the
Central Society for Recovery (welfare) and Holiday Colonies for
Children and the Economic Union. For a long period he was a teacher at
the ‘Akker’ school, situated in the middle of Meppel. He was known as a
good teacher and he also kept cool in difficult situations:
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Back row, middle: Coenraad van Es, a respected member of the Red Cross in Meppel.
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Like
all the other schools the ‘Akker’ school also had a play break at ten
thirty, for a quarter of an hour. In this time some of the children had
to help the teacher to get the books ready for the next lesson. Of
course this was done at great speed so that the few minutes left could
be used for more interesting business.
One day
Engel Strik laid out the reading books for Mr Goedgebure. While sliding
from one bench to another on his socks he suddenly got a giant splinter
(7cm. long and 1cm. wide) in his foot. Engel squealed like a pig,
creating some panic. Goedgebure did not have a clue what to do, but his
colleague van Es kept his head cool. He sent one of the bigger boys to
the cobbler Mr. van Tiel to get a pair of pincers. Then the operation
could begin. Two teachers held the patient down and Mr van Es performed
the operation by using the pincers to take out the piece of wood from
Engel’s foot, who was screaming terribly. Engel had to stay at home for
more than ten weeks with an infected foot.
Because
of this event the Municipal council of Meppel granted a generous credit
for the purchase of slippers for the pupils at the ‘Akker’ school who
wore clogs. For many years the splinter was kept at the school. Not as
a relic, but as an instructive example for the pupils, which was then
customary.
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Coenraad van Es (standing left) was a teacher at the Akkerschool and
after that at the Noorderschool.
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As a teacher Coenraad van Es naturally took pat in the festivities on the Queen’s Birthday (Koninginnedag):
I
can still see school master van Es, as he walked next to ‘his’ children
his coat tails fluttering, in the Queen’s Birthday parade, singing with
them: ‘We live free, we live happy on our beloved Dutch soil.
Probably one of his best qualities was the fact that he had a sober look on life.
Probably one of his best qualities was the fact that he had a sober outlook on life. Mrs. Valentijn-Pol remembers such a moment:
I
worked seven years as a typist at the Jewish Firm of L. J. Frank
(Steamboat quay); they were traders in tropical fruits and bakery
commodities. I can still remember the first day of the War.
I
was walking with Mr van Es (who was a part time accountant in the
company) to the office. Tears were rolling down his cheeks and he said
to me: ‘Marie it’s finished; first we go and then you all.
As to the first, he would be proved right, unfortunately. He was soon
confronted with the plans of the Germans, because one of the first
measures of the Germans was sacking all Jewish teachers. He was
teaching at the Noorder School then, which meant he would have been
made redundant, but with the help of the town council this was
prevented.
Because van Es was only one year from retirement, he was offered early
retirement. The reason given was ‘[…] that the applicant was no longer
fit by sickness to perform his task as a teacher’. He accepted the
‘offer’! His ‘unsuitability’ probably was a result of the fact, that
over the years he had become rather deaf and maybe that is the reason
he no longer could teach properly. Not much later, there was worse
news. Associations wanting to be considered for council grants should
dismiss their Jewish committee members.
This regulation came into practice at the beginning of 1941; Coenraad
van Es then still had a position with the Association for Infant Food
and Clothing and with the Central Society for the Recovery and Holiday
Colonies for Children.
The chairman – secretary J. Ph. Kuipers (Association for Infant Food
and Clothing), and the secretary G. Assendorp (Central Society for the
Recovery and Holiday Colonies for Children) hurriedly declared that
C.H. van Es had laid down his function as a committee member. It is
remarkable to see how easily they let their colleague down.
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In 1932, Coenraad van Es and Doctor Jules Leijdesdorff, members of the
Association to provide Food and Clothing for Children in Meppel.
Jules Leijdesdorff, went into hiding and survived the War.
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A
few weeks later (the 24th of April 1941) Coenraad handed in his radio
at the Police station at Hagenstraat. In those days it was forbidden
for Jews to possess a radio.
Apparently this experience put him one
step ahead of the Germans; he had learned his lesson from their
behaviour, so before he was obliged to hand in his bicycle he thought
of a cunning trick; he sold the bicycles of himself and his wife to
family A. de Wolde for the sum of fl 175,-!
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Martha van de Rhoer and Bram van Es on their wedding day in 1942.
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After
some time, the van Es family felt more and more pressure . Many Jews,
including son Bram, were sent to a labour camp. Thursday the 10th of
June 1942, Coenraad reported to the Police that a bicycle, which he had
sent to his son, had gone missing during transport to labour camp
Vledder, where his son worked as a cook. Luckily, it seemed to have
been a misunderstanding; the bicycle was found unattended in Ruinen.
In the last Meppeler Courant, (the local paper) which appeared in the
War (Friday 12th of June 1942) there was a brief note:
The
retired teacher C.v.E reported to the police that a bicycle, given for
transport to a local carrier did not reach its destination. The police
have traced the bicycle.
On the 12th of
September Bram lost something again; this time a suitcase with
contents. Unexpectedly he had to move from camp Vledder to camp Orvelte
and was unable to bring his suitcase with him, so he decided to hand
over the suitcase to a stranger, asking him if he could send the
suitcase to his parents in Meppel. It never arrived and Bram suspected
a colleague (De Bruin), the cook at the labour camp Vledder of stealing
it. Father van Es asked the police to investigate the matter, but
without any result.
In those days all Jews had to hand over all their possessions to Liro.
Coenraad realised that it was only a matter of time before his wife,
daughter and himself would be transported, so he took every precaution
that the Germans would not lay their hands on all his possessions.
Shares and cash were entrusted to people in Meppel. His shares with a
value of fl 2.700,- were given to Mr van der Belt who lived at
Emmastraat and the other part of his capital to A. de Wolde. A written
document regarding the shares entrusted to Van de Belt still exist:
Meppel, 16 July 1945
I
received from Mr H. v.d. Belt, Meppel, 8 Emmastraat, a sum of fl
2.700,- Two thousand and seven hundred Guilders worth of shares,
belonging to C. H. van Es, kept in trust by the above-mentioned Van de
Belt.
The trustee,
A. de Wolde, Jzn
Most probably very little went to Liro, because at the Liquidation of this institute in 1951, only the sum of fl 777,29 in favour of the Van Es Family was found.
A part of the possessions was kept safe, but for the family itself that
was not the case. On the 3th of October 1942 father, mother and
daughter were taken out of their house and taken to Westerbork.
In the meantime son Bram was married to Martha van de Rhoer, and after
various Labour camps, Bram as well arrived in Westerbork, where he met
his parents again and his wife.
Everything went rather fast: on the 9th of October Coenraad, Schoontje
and Carolina together with other Meppel Jews were transported to
Auschwitz and were all killed on the 12th of October.
After two years in Camp Westerbork, Bram and Martha were transported to
Theresienstadt in 1944. After three weeks Bram was deported to
Auschwitz, where he was killed. Martha survived Theresienstadt; she was
liberated by the Russians and returned to the Netherlands with a French
Canadian division.
After the family had been removed on the 3th of October, their house
was cleared out and sealed and on the 26th of October it was made
available to the Wehrmacht (armed forces).
Probably not for long, as in 1943 the building was sold for fl
4.500,- to Mr A. Boverhof, a café owner in Vledder, who thought that as
an NSB (the Dutch National Socialist Movement) member he would be
entitled to own this house.
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