Stumbling Stone Zijlstraat 71

This memorial stone (so called Stolpersteine of stumbling blocks) commemorates:

Hartog de Leeuw

The small copper plaques, in the pavement in front of houses of which the (mostly Jewish) residents were murdered by the Nazis, mention the name, date of birth and place (mostly a concentration camp) and date of death.

In many other cities, mainly in Germany but also in other European countries, the memorials also can be found. There are already many thousands of these plaques and their number is still counting. Almost all Stolpersteine are laid by the German artist himself, Gunter Demnig.

HARTOG THE LION
April 15, 1889 (Haarlem) - January 31, 1944 (Auschwitz)
ZIJLSTRAAT 71
Hartog de Leeuw was born on April 15, 1889 in the family of the butcher Abraham de Leeuw and his wife Sara de Leeuw-Goudsmit on the Hagestraat in Haarlem. As a 33-year-old traveling salesman, he married the 34-year-old non-Jewish Jacoba Woutina van de Wal on 31 August 1922 in Amsterdam, born 21 January 1888 in Hof van Delft (nowadays part of the municipality of Delft) and daughter of Johannes Leonardus van de Wal and Jaapje Verhagen. Because of the then not unusual situation that women were (honourably) discharged upon marriage, the marriage certificate states that Jacoba Woutina was 'without profession'. That doesn't mean she didn't have a job. In the period before her marriage she worked as a student nurse and later as a nurse at the Binnengasthuis and the Luthers Diakonessenziekenhuis, both in Amsterdam. After her marriage, she continued to work as a private nurse in healthcare. The marriage of Hartog de Leeuw and Jacoba Wouterina was childless.
In August 1943, Hartog de Leeuw lived with his sister Grietje van Emmen-de Leeuw and ten other Jewish people in hiding and an eighteen-month-old child from a mixed marriage in a house on the Nieuwe Gracht in Haarlem. His wife Jacoba Wouterina also stayed there. When four Dutch employees of the Sicherheitsdienst, including the notorious Haarlem police officer Fake Krist, showed up at the door on Friday 20 August around 11.30 am, they hid in the attic, but the hiding place was discovered and all the people in hiding were taken away. The men were punched in the face on that occasion and jewelery and clothing were also confiscated. As a non-Jewish woman, Jacoba Wouterina was set free on August 22 and survived the war.
On 25 September 1943 Hartog de Leeuw was registered as a prisoner in camp Vught and from there he was transferred to camp Westerbork on 15 November 1943. A day later he was deported to Auschwitz. He was probably put to work as a forced laborer in or near Auschwitz and died in the following months. The official date of death of January 31, 1944 is in all probability a collection date indicating that he was no longer alive at that time.
Transport from Westerbork 16 November 1943.
Died in or near Auschwitz 31 January 1944.
He was 54 years old.

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