Sara de Jong van Koningsbrugge was born in Schoten, the Netherlands, on 24 April 1914. The SS murdered her in Auschwitz on 21 January 1945 at the age of 30.
Since 1936, Sara de Jong was married to Adolphus (‘Dolf’) Adrianus Petrus van Koningsbrugge (Amsterdam, 21 October 1913 – Heerlen, 15 June 1974). Based on the number of individuals listed under Sara’s name in the Weitere Aufstellung(“Additional List” or “Supplementary List”) of February 1942, the couple had a child at that time. It was correct, although Sara was already heavily pregnant with their second daughter. The couple does not appear in the Zaandam municipal archives, suggesting they moved to Zaandam after mid-1939. Records from the Amsterdam City Archives indicate they relocated in August of that year to Baltischestraat 8, in Zaandam’s Havenbuurt, from Naarden. Adolf van Koningsbrugge, who was not Jewish, worked as a machinist. Shortly after settling in Zaandam, they were forced to move to Amsterdam, eventually living on Jodenbreestraat.
Amsterdam
In a confidential report by Zaandam communist resistance fighter Klaas Grootes concerning a betrayal in the Havenbuurt (November 1943), Adolf van Koningsbrugge is mentioned. Grootes knew him from public work projects. According to Grootes, Adolf was married to a Jewish woman, Lien, and was compelled to move to Amsterdam. By late 1943, Adolf, his wife, and their two children were living at Jodenbreestraat 33a. The members of the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) planned a meeting to take place there. The family now included two children: Clara Maria (born 10 April 1937 in Haarlem) and Rachel (born 28 March 1942 in Amsterdam). However, according to the Jewish Monument, Sara was registered in her parents’ home in Haarlem at the end of August 1942. It seems unlikely, as she was likely living in Amsterdam with her husband and children.
A Narrow Escape
After the war, Grootes’ wife, Trien, wrote about the Van Koningsbrugge couple, whom she had known for some time: “I spoke to Lien before she had to move to Amsterdam. She told me, ‘I’ll be getting a house there too.’ I never saw her again. Her husband escaped danger and later played a role in the resistance. I don’t know what exactly, but in 1943, we were instructed to go to Amsterdam, where Dolf Koningsbrugge lived in the Jewish quarter. When we arrived, everything was dark, but he was still living there. It was terrible—there were no windows or doors in the houses, and everything was pitch black. We never heard from him again.”
Unbeknownst to the Grootes family, when they attempted to warn the Van Koningsbrugge family of impending danger in the last week of November 1943, the family had already moved three weeks earlier to Jodenbreestraat 28 III. Tragically, they knocked on the wrong door. On 11 December, Sara was arrested there by two Dutch policemen on orders from the Sicherheitsdienst. She had been betrayed by her former neighbor, Francisca de Munck-Siffels, who was now working as an informant for the SD.
Deportation
Most Jews in mixed marriages who did not divorce survived the war, particularly if they were not heads of households. They were still required to wear the Star of David and faced other restrictions, such as sterilization. Sara, however, was arrested late in the war, possibly for violating a regulation. She was sent to Westerbork and deported to Auschwitz on Sunday, 3 September 1944—the last train to Auschwitz. This transport included 1,019 people, among them Anne Frank and her family, who had been betrayed on 4 August 1944. Sara Groen, Samuel de Lange, and Adam Pais were also part of this group.
Sara van Koningsbrugge-de Jong survived in Auschwitz for four months. She perished on 21 January 21 1945 during the brutal final evacuation of the camp. Six days later, the Russian army liberated the remaining prisoners of Auschwitz. Sara was 30 years old. She was one of five individuals from mixed marriages in the Zaan region murdered during the Holocaust.
Family
Sara’s parents were Simon de Jong (Haarlem, 22 December 1884) and Rachel de Jong-Cohen de Solla (Haarlem, 31 March 1892). Sara was the eldest of five children: two daughters and three sons—Hartog Simon (Haarlem, 15 July 1918), Jacob (Borgerhout, 2 May 1921), Elie (Haarlem, 3 June 1927), and Corrie (3 December 1929). Hartog received a market permit for Lange Annastraat in Haarlem in 1937.
The Nazis wiped out Sara’s entire immediate family during the Holocaust. Her father was gassed in Auschwitz on 31 August 1942, along with her 12-year-old sister Corrie. Her mother died there on 19 November 1943 at the age of 51. Sara’s three brothers had already perished: Hartog (24) in Auschwitz on 28 February 28, 1943, and Jacob (21) and Elie (15), likely in a labor camp somewhere in Central Europe.
After the war, in February 1945, Adolf van Koningsbrugge moved from Amsterdam to Heerhugowaard.
Sara van Koningsbrugge-de Jong
Sara, your name lingers soft in the air,
A melody sung through the halls of despair.
A mother, a daughter, a soul full of grace,
Stolen too soon from this cruel, bitter place.
The frost of January marked your days,
A numbered fate in Auschwitz’s haze.
Hope, a flicker, dimmed in the night,
Extinguished by hands that feared your light.
Six days—oh, how close freedom drew,
A heartbeat away, a life to renew.
Yet hatred’s hand clung tight to its creed,
Innocence crushed by an unholy need.
Did you dream of spring beyond the barbed wire?
Of sunlight’s warmth, of the crackling fire?
Did you whisper prayers to the silent skies,
Or sing lullabies for a child’s cries?
Sara, you stand in the echoes of time,
A victim of cruelty, a martyr sublime.
Your story survives where shadows have tread,
A legacy borne by the living and dead.
Though Auschwitz silenced your final breath,
It could not erase what defies death.
For love, like a river, flows beyond years,
Washing the world with memory’s tears.
Sara, we honor the life you gave,
A flicker of light in history’s grave.
Your name, your soul, shall forever reside,
A star in the darkness, a guide for the tide.
Sources
https://www.joodsmonument.nl/nl/page/134772/sara-van-koningsbrugge-de-jong#intro
https://www.oorlogsbronnen.nl/tijdlijn/ac4510b5-be69-465a-9076-7dc698949256
https://oorlogsgravenstichting.nl/personen/81868/sara-van-koningsbrugge-de-jong
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