The eight people from the Secret Annex met all sorts of familiar and new people in Westerbork who testified after the war about their encounters with Anne, Margot, Edith, Otto, Peter, Hermann, Auguste or Fritz. One of them was Leentje (Lenie) de Jong-van Naarden.

Lenie van Naarden was born in Amsterdam on 18 July 1915.^[1] The van Naarden family consisted of father Wolf van Naarden (1877-1943), mother Netje van Naarden-Meijer (1883-1943), brother Louis van Naarden (1908-1994) and sister Judith Lena Halberstadt-van Naarden (1909-1964).^[2] The family lived in Zandvoort until 1927, after which they moved to Tugelaweg 127-II in Amsterdam.^[1] The family were practising Jews and attended synagogue in Zandvoort. The Van Naarden children also each received Jewish lessons from a teacher from Haarlem.^[3]

After completing MULO school, Lenie worked at the HEMA head office from the age of seventeen. Around July 1942, all Jewish employees there were fired, including Lenie and her husband-to-be, whom she had met at HEMA.^[4]

On 5 August 1942, Lenie van Naarden married Philip Felix de Jong (1913-1972) in Amsterdam. This was no longer allowed at the town hall, so they married in the Jewish community building at Plantage Parklaan 9.^[5]

In hiding

In early 1943, the couple went into hiding together with a cousin of Lenie's husband in The Hague. They stayed there until they were betrayed in late 1943. Lenie and her husband took the train to Amsterdam, where they were able to go into hiding temporarily with friends. From there, a hiding address in Friesland was arranged. From March or April 1944, they were in hiding with a working-class family with two children. In early August 1944, the house was betrayed and Lenie, her husband and the husband of the family providing the hiding place were arrested.

Lenie's parents had already been killed at Camp Sobibor on 21 May 1943.^[2]

Deportation

Lenie and Philip van Naarden arrived at Camp Westerbork, via Lemmer, Leeuwarden and Assen, on 12 August 1944. There they were designated as punishment cases and, like the Frank family, ended up in punishment hut 67.^[6] They were put to work on the batteries. In Westerbork, they met the Frank family for the first time. Philip already had good contact with Otto Frank there; contact between Lenie and Edith Frank was established later in Auschwitz.^[3]

On 3 September 1944, Lenie and her husband were put on a transport to Auschwitz, along with the Frank family.^[7] After a three-day journey, they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on the night of 5-6 September 1944. The women were shaved bald and tattooed with a number. Lenie was issued the number A25145.^[8] She remembered having to perform forced labour, lugging stones from one place to another, which another group then had to lug back to the beginning.^[9]

In Auschwitz, she formed a group with about a dozen other Dutch women, including Bloeme Emden and Ronnie Goldstein-van Cleef. After the war, Lenie stated that she would not have made it without this little group.^[10]

Lenie stayed in the same hut as Edith, Anne and Margot Frank. After their arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Anne and Margot contracted scabies, and were put temporarily in the Krätzeblock - the hut for scabies sufferers. Conditions in the Krätzeblock were poor. To help her daughters, Edith, with the help of Lenie and Rebecca Brommet-Ritmeester, whose daughter was also in the Krätzeblock, dug a hole somewhere along the side of the hut through which they gave food to the children.^[11]

Around the end of October 1944, Lenie, like 50 other Dutch women, was put on a transport again. This time to an Arbeitslager in Libau, Upper Silesia, where they had to perform forced labour. Conditions were bad because of the hard work and cold weather. On 8 May 1945, Lenie was liberated by the Soviet army.^[12]

After the liberation, she and the group of Dutch women returned to the Netherlands, where they arrived in July 1945. Upon arrival, Lenie went to an address she had agreed with her husband to go to if they survived. There, Philip was already waiting for her. Like Otto Frank, he had survived Auschwitz and had travelled back to the Netherlands at the same time as Otto.^[13]

Source personal data.^[1] Addresses: Zandvoort; Tugelaweg 127-II, Amsterdam (Aug '27); Lekstraat 162-I (Jul '45), Stadionweg 214-II (Aug '45), UIterwaardestraat 142hs (Jun '48), Jekerstraat 63-I (Feb '63), Rondeel 29 (Sep '90).