Just two names of people who should have never been murdered. Micheal van West was a florist. There is no records of his wife, Saartje van West-Goldsmit’s profession, but I will presume she was a stay at home mother. They were no threat to anyone–just two people trying to get by.
Michael van West was the sixth of the nine children of Salomon van West (1859-1931) and Betje Lelie (1853-1935) and born in Amsterdam on 31 October 1887. Like all his brothers and his father, Michel was also a flower dealer. He married Saartje Goudsmit on 31 July 1912 in Amsterdam, a daughter of Levie Goudsmit and Hanna Vos, she was born on 6 October 1887 there. At the same time as Michael, his brother Jacob, married Saartje’s sister, Raatje Goudsmit.
Michael had five brothers and four sisters, all born in Amsterdam. On 1 December 1910, the still unmarried Michael van West left for Belgium and was registered there at the address Krijtstraat 8 in Berchem. According to the statement that Michael made to the Antwerp officials, he planned to stay there for more than six months.
After the marriage of Michael and his brother Jacob van West to Saartje and Raatje Goudsmit respectively, at the end of July 1912, the four of them left for Brussels on 6 August 1912, where they came to live at 31, Rue de L’Ascension.
Nothing is known about the period from August 1912 to 1944 about Michael and his wife Saartje, as well about Jacob and his wife Raatje. However, it is certain that Michael van West and Saartje Goudsmit were arrested in the early spring of 1944 and transferred to the transit camp in Mechelen, Kazerne Dossin. In March of that year, by order of the Central Bureau for National Security, an instruction was issued to urgently proceed to the arrest of Jews.
Michael and Saartje were deported from Mechelen to Auschwitz on 4 April 1944 with convoy 24, which arrived there on 7 April 1944 with 625 victims in total. Of these, 270 were murdered immediately upon arrival in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau; 355 people were registered in the camp, of which 147 were still alive when Auschwitz was liberated.
It is not known whether Michael and Saartje belonged to the group of 270 victims, or to the group of 355 people who were registered. However, it is clear that they did not belong to the 147 people who were liberated ,but were murdered in Auschwitz after 7 April 1944, or died due to exhaustion, abuse or diseases.
The 24th Convoy of 4 April 1944, was one of the many tragic transports during the Holocaust. It departed from Mechelen, Belgium, which was a major transit point for deportations of Jews during World War II. The destination of this convoy was Auschwitz.
The convoy consisted of Jewish men, women, and children who were rounded up by the Nazis and their collaborators as part of their systematic genocide of European Jews. The journey from Mechelen to Auschwitz was harrowing, with cramped conditions, lack of food and water, and the constant fear of the unknown awaiting them at their destination.
Michael and Saartje had two sons. Edouard Elias van West was murdered somewhere in Germany in February 1945. aged 17. The eldest son, Leo van West, was also murdered in February 1945 in Mauthausen. He was 31 years old.
Source
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/720814/michael-van-west
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/720813/saartje-van-west-goudsmit
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