A happy occasion: five years ago today, this trilingual website went on-line. During this period 24 stories have been published in English, 21 in Dutch and 8 in German. Thus the histories of the Löwenhardt, De Leeuw, Ten Brink and Weijl families have been preserved for posterity – with the help of archiving by the Netherlands Royal Library. At the foot of this first milestone we find a small surprise:
Two years ago I found a picture of an unknown butcher, shown above. He was likely to be a member of the family, butchery and cattle trading being the prime occupations. Just before reaching this Internet milestone, the riddle has been solved. Nettie de Leeuw-Manasse – who turned 95 three weeks ago – presented me with this picture of the butchershop of her grandfather Isaak Cohen (1857-1942) from ‘s-Heerenberg, the father of her mother Julia Cohen. (Click on a picture for enlargement)
Say for yourself: doesn’t the man in the picture above resemble proud Isaak Cohen at the entrance to his butchershop in the center of ‘s-Heerenberg?
Isaak was born on 31 August 1857 in ‘s-Heerenberg, son of Simon Cohen and Sara David. On 23 November 1887 he married Jeannetta de Winter, the grandmother Nettie has been named after. Jeannetta died in July 1919, Isaak lived to be 84 and died ‘just in time’ on 21 March 1942. Meaning: some six weeks before Dutch Jews were compelled to wear ‘Jew stars’ on their clothing and four months before deportations to the extermination camps started.
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