Summary
In loving memory of the Jeannine Gosschalk family.
On August the second 1997 Reine Jeannine Charlette Gosschalk passed away at the age of 61. During the final years of her life she had been looking for her Jewish ancestors who used to live in the province of Groningen in the north of the Netherlands in the 19 th century and who then moved to different places in the country. She was not given the time to finish this inquiry. From her notes that were left to us it became clear that she wanted this inquiry to be carried out in order to restore the memory of her relatives, many of whom were deported in the second World War and never returned. Her objective was not to focus on war grief but to keep the memory of her family alive. She named people who could help her carry out this research.
The most comprehensive project is the commemoration of the Jewish Kamerling family in Veendam. Ms Koeman from Bourtange, a well known author on Jewish life in Groningen , was immediately prepared to look into Jeannine’s Veendam family. After a year of intense browsing through old newspapers and magazines and more targeted research in various archives Ms Koeman has given the Kamerling family, which was no longer known in Veendam and Wildervanck, back its identity by means of a family chronicle. Everybody who wants to can now get acquainted with the lives and works of the members of the Kamerling family.
After having moved from Germany to Wildervanck in the first half of the 19 th century, the family moved to Veendam in the second half of the 19 th century to make a decent living in the clothing industry. Several generations of the Kamerling family were members on the synagogue board and, moreover, David Kamerling filled his long and rich life with a position on the board of the Chamber of Commerce of Groningen and Veendam. Around 1900 some relatives, among whom Jeannine’s grandmother Reina Johanna Kamerling, daughter of the above mentioned David Kamerling, moved to different places in our country. Reina Johanna Kamerling got married to Karel Koopman, an antique dealer from Zwolle and moved to Paris in 1902. Here her daughter Frederika would marry Jeannine’s father Eliazer Gosschalk, who was there on business.
When Jeannine was born on January 24, 1936, her grandfather Karel Koopman had already died and had been buried at the Jewish cemetery Muiderberg near Amsterdam . On the outbreak of WW II grandmother Reina Johanna Kamerling lived in Amsterdam with her deaf and dumb son John (Jozef). From Amsterdam she wrote several letters to her daughter Frederika, who had managed to escape to England with her family. These letters have been kept and must no doubt have been Jeannine’s most precious possession.
The Gosschalk family, too, is originally from Germany and in the course of the 18 th century this family settled in Wyhe, a village on the IJssel river. From here several members of this butcher’s family moved to the City of Groningen in the north of the Netherlands , where most of them would stay until the end of the 19 th century. In 1887 Israel Gosschalk, the eldest son of butcher Joseph Gosschalk, moved to Amsterdam with his young family in order to find a job in this fast growing city. After his early death in 1895 his wife Grietje, her parents, and the couple’s three young children faced many hardships. Despite all this Grietje managed to give her children Joseph, Flora, and Eliazer, Jeannine’s father, a good education. In 1917 Eliazer left for Paris on business and got married to Frederika Koopman, after a previous this being his second marriage. On the outbreak of WW II Jeannine and her parents could barely flee to relatively safe England , where she was superbly taken care of by the Prince of Wales Trust.
Jeannine had hardly any family left after the war. Memories of her parents and her dear relatives could only be related to few photos and letters. Her unfathomable pain over the loss of everything that had been dear to the family and indeed of the family itself traumatized Jeannine, her father and her mother considerably. For her aunt Flora Gosschalk, who was liberated from one of the last transportations from Bergen Belsen and who most probably met her end in the refugee camp in Hillersleben, she wanted to place a commemorative plaque with the cooperation of the Jewish community of Sachsen Anhalt. Jeannine’s father fell ill shortly after the war and died on May 28, 1967. Her mother died on November 19, 1987.
Since the seventies Jeannine Gosschalk had shared her life with Andries Vincent Honings. With him Jeannine also shared her love of England , the English language and culture and the typically English sense of humour. At a more advanced age she took to studying English literature at university with a strong preference for mediaeval literature. She was a very dedicated student and enjoyed her studies to the full. When she died she had submitted successful papers and had almost got her degree.
In accordance with her final wish Bart Honings (Andries Vincent Honings’eldest son) and his wife Herma have taken care of the execution of her will. It remains somewhat unsatisfactory, however, to bring the inquiry for the family chronicle to a close whereas further inquiry will result in more and new pieces of information. For there should be more members of the family still alive, descendants of David Kamerling and his wife Frederika, whom to this day we haven’t been able to inform about the commemoration. They could provide us with more information. On the other hand we do not think it a good thing to commemorate the family that lived in the previous century after the year 2000.
We felt privileged to be involved in restoring the memory of the Kamerling family by means of this document and to pilot the family documents into the safe haven of Yad Vashem for all eternity, in line with Jeannine’s wish.
Andries Vincent Honings, Herma and Bart Honings and their children Janneke and Joris Honings, Meppel, 24 January, 1999
