Grietje van der Kar-Posno was born in Rotterdam on December 9, 1911. She was Jewish, the daughter of Heintje Snoek-Canes and David van der Kar

holocaust.victims: Grietje van der Kar-Posno was born in Rotterdam on December 9, 1911. She was Jewish, the daughter of Heintje Snoek-Canes and David van der Kar. Her father died when she was a small child. She had six siblings and was married to Marinus Arie Posno. 

Grietje had six children with her husband. Marinus sadly died in 1940. Their children were Marinus Johannes Cornelis (1933), Hendrika (1934), Cornelia (1936), David (1937), Arie (1939) and daughter Matje (1940).

Grietje was a single mother of six, which at the time was extremely difficult and the family lived poorly. Cornelia and Hendrika were removed from their mother’s care in 1941 and sent to live in a Jewish medical institution in Apeloorn. On January 21, 1943, the Nazis chased more than a thousand patients out of their beds and sent them on cattle cars to Auschwitz, including Grietje’s two small children. Hendrika and Cornelia were killed in Auschwitz on January 25, at ages seven and eight. 

Meanwhile, Grietje and her four surviving children were sent to Westerbork on May 26, 1943. At this time she did not know her other children’s fate. Due to the fact that her husband was not Jewish, her four surviving children were considered “half Jews” by Nazi standards and were discharged from the camp. They were sent to an orphanage in Amsterdam and survived the war. 

Grietje herself was sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp on September 14, 1943. Due to the extreme overcrowding of the camp, Grietje was sent to the Terezín ghetto on January 25, 1944. She survived the rest of the war in Terezin. She later reunited with her four children, remarried, and had three more children. She died in Amsterdam on April 5, 1990 at age seventy-eight. May the memories of Grietje and her family be a blessing. 

REMEMBER GRIETJE POSNO. 

REMEMBER HENDRIKA POSNO. 

REMEMBER CORNELIA POSNO. 

This post was requested by Grietje’s family. 

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