Brussels 20/9/98 SOPHIE COHEN-KLEERMAKER

The same year, the couple moved to Venlo where they started an Umbrella shop. The Umbrellas were made at home, in a workroom behind the shop. Raw materials and components were imported from nearby Germany. Philip was a specialist in assembeling and reparing umbrellas and walking sticks, Sophie did the sewing. While her husband travelled throughout the country to sell their products to other retailers, she tended the shop.

After WW I, when inflation had turned Germany into an extremely cheap tourist country, Sophie made several trips through Rhineland. Although without any formal education, she became quite fluent in German. Anecdote: One day when Philip was on a buisiness trip, a German sales representative called. Sophie told him : Mein mann ist verreist , also konnen Sie mit mir sachen machen" {In Dutch Zaken means `business` , but in German Sachen means Things }.

They had Three [surviving] children Harry 1917 Martha 1919 and Herbert Samuel 1930.

As the family grew more prosperous , life became easier for Sophie. They moved to ever more comfortable houses, the workroom was replaced by a separarte factory, a saleslady was hired, but eventually the shop was given up. In later years, she had a live- in house maid, and went several times holidaying with the children on the Seaside. Mrs. Cohen was now a middle class housewife, well settled in the Jewish enclave of Catholic Venlo, In 1938, she started studying English. She also learned how to swim but never managed to ride a bicycle [exceptional in Holland]. She was well known for her strict teetotalism. Her Father had been an alcoholic, and run out on his family . This probably explains why Sophie would not admit a single drop of alcohol in the house . When Jewish rituals required the consumption of wine, she would brew a sham from raisin extracts.

The second World War put an end to this quiet existence, In 1941, the couple did not feel safe in Venlo anymore, and moved to Amsterdam, in 1943, they went into hiding separately. But Sophie was found out at her safe house, and sent to Theresienstadt. This was not an extermination camp but the inmates lived under the constant threat of being transferred to places like Auschwitz, Sophie volunteered at the moment of arrival to serve as a Nurse . This happened to be considered as a permamnent job, so she stayed until the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945.

Once back in Holland, she was reunited with her Husband and found all children alive. Even the factory was restored to them. But they were older now, and could not resume the thread . Philip`s health failed, and frail Sophie could not cope with a man who passed out at unexpected moments. They had to sell the factory and move to an old poeple`s home at Arnhem.

The first years were happy ones for Sophie. She participated in all kinds of community activities, clay modelling, needlework, and embroidery, perfected her English {trips with Herbert to London and Wales}, and even founded an old ladies` gymnastics club. She also wrote a personal diary that eventualy appeared in print. Her only surviving sister came to live in the same home.

But Philip`s health was waning and in 1969 he died . from then on Sophie went downhill, both physiclly and mentally. Aphasia caused social isolation, in the end she could not even communicate with her own children. As the Arnhem home was not equipped to provide care for permanently infirm people , she had to be transfered to another home, in Amsterdam . after several years of extreme mental solitude she died there in 1980,

Harry cohen.