Johannes Kleiman

Johannes (Jo) Kleiman was born on 17 August 1896 as the son of Cornelis Kleiman and Emmetje Vink.^[1] He was the third of four children. He had two brothers, Cornelis (Cor) and Willem Jacobus (Willy), and a sister, Agatha, who died young.

In 1896, the Kleiman family lived at Domineespad, now called Zuiderkerkstraat, in Koog aan de Zaan. A few months after the birth of Johannes, the family moved to Nijmegen. Kleiman married Johanna Catharina Reuman in July 1923. Their daughter Johanna was born in 1928. During the hiding period he and his family lived at 12 II Wielingenstraat in Amsterdam.

The first contacts with Otto Frank date back to 1923, when Kleiman became proxy holder at the Amsterdam branch of the family bank. Around the same time he became managing director of the Centrale Maatschappij voor Handel en Industrie, in which some of Otto's relatives and acquaintances had an interest. Otto himself was a supervisory director from December 1933. From the mid 1930s, Kleiman was also a commissioner at the Paauwe clock factory, and together with brother Willy he had a pest control company called Cimex.

Kleiman played a very important role in the establishment of Pectacon in 1938, and was director of Opekta from its 'aryanisation' in the autumn of 1940. He was the initiator of the hiding period in the Secret Annex, and was one of the helpers during the entire period. His name appears several times in Anne's diary. During the raid on 4 August 1944, Kleiman was also arrested and spent several weeks incarcerated. Thanks to the mediation of the Red Cross he was released because of his poor health. Until his death — at his desk — he remained a director of Opekta. For several years he also represented Otto Frank on the board of the Anne Frank House. In 1972 Otto Frank applied for the Yad Vashem decoration for all the helpers - posthumously in the case of Kleiman. ^[2]