Rozette (Ronnie) van Cleef was born in Amersfoort on 28 June 1921 and grew up in a liberal Jewish family.^[1] Her younger brother Heiman and sister Alida were born in 1929 and died a few months apart in 1931.^[2]

Her father, Meijer van Cleef (1897-1943), was a sales representative and through his business trips to Germany was well informed about the situation in Germany and what was happening to the Jewish population there.^[3]

In 1936, the family moved from Amersfoort to Pletterijstraat 53 in The Hague.^[4] At seventeen, Ronnie became a member of the Jewish youth association Tot Ons Plezier (TOP).^[5] At an early age, she started singing and writing poetry; something she kept doing even in the camps.^[6]

Resistance

After the German invasion, Ronnie joined the resistance as early as early 1941. Together with her then boyfriend Kurt Heinz Reiner (1921-1944), she was in a - mostly Jewish - resistance group consisting of four young men and two young women.^[7] The group arranged hiding addresses and forged identity cards. One of the women worked as a manager in the KINO- EN FOTOHANDEL KIFO at Fahrenheitstraat 555 in The Hague, where the group met in the back of the shop.^[8]

From early 1941, a Verwalter (business agent appointed by the Nazis) was assigned to Ronnie's father's business and the family decided to stop living at home.^[9] With her parents, cousins and nieces, rooms were rented from a boarding house owner friend in The Hague. When the first razzias took place in The Hague in mid-1942, the Van Cleef family went into hiding.^[10]

Hiding

A period followed during which Ronnie lived in hiding at various addresses. On 3 March 1943, after being betraying by the tenant, her father was arrested in a castle in Almelo where he was in hiding with others.^[11] Meijer van Cleef arrived in Westerbork on 6 March and was put on a transport to Sobibor on 10 March 1943. There he was murdered immediately after arriving on 13 March 1943.^[12]

After her father's arrest, Ronnie van Cleef became more active in the resistance. She started working with Willem Mondriaan (uncle Willem), who was part of Hendrik (Henk) Höften's (1913-1944) group in Almelo.^[13] For him, she travelled with people in hiding, and took false papers and voucher cards to Almelo, The Hague, Amsterdam and Zwolle, among other places.^[14]

Betrayal

In the spring of 1944, Ronnie met a former schoolmate who asked her for help. That schoolmate turned out to be working as an informant for the notorious SD officer Cornelis (Kees) Johannes Kaptein (1915-1949) and arranged for Ronnie to be followed by Kaptein.^[15] In June 1944, she was arrested on the train.^[16]

After interrogation at Euterpestraat in Amsterdam, Ronnie was transferred to Detention Centre I (Weteringschans).^[17] There, in the cell, she met Frieda Menco-Brommet (1925-2019), with whom she became good friends. Frieda Brommet recalled in an interview with the Anne Frank House that she helped Ronnie van Cleef write poems for the male prisoners.^[18]

Auschwitz-Birkenau

In early July 1944, Ronnie van Cleef ended up in one of the prison barracks in Westerbork. On 3 September 1944, like the people from the Secret Annex, she was put on a transport to Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. The transport arrived on 6 September 1944, and after the first selections, Ronnie was put in the same barracks as Edith, Anne and Margot Frank in Auschwitz-Birkenau.^[19] The Frank sisters regularly stood near her during roll calls, Ronnie recalled in an interview with Willy Lindwer in 1988.^[20]

In Auschwitz-Birkenau, prisoners had to perform forced labour by lugging stones from one side of the camp to the other, and back again. Ronnie wrote a poem for Frieda Brommet about it.^[21] Ronnie recalled that she braved the horrors of the camp by immersing herself in memories of beautiful things and mainly in music.^[22]

Not long after arriving at the camp, she contracted scarlet fever and ended up in a sick barracks. That is also where Frieda and the Frank sisters eventually ended up. Frieda's mother, Rebecca Ritmeester-Brommet (1897-1989), and Edith Frank, provided food for the four in the infirmary by digging a hole under the hut through which they passed the food.^[23] Ronnie recalled how she would sing for the Frank girls in the barracks to keep their spirits up.^[24]

After six weeks there, she had recovered enough to be released from the infirmary and managed to join the 50 Dutch women selected for forced labour in Libau. The women worked six and a half days a week in a factory and were free on Sunday afternoons. One of her camp mates, Bloeme Evers-Emden (1926-2016), recalled that during those free hours, songs were sung that Ronnie had written to opera and operetta melodies.^[25]

Liberation

On 8 May 1945, the women in Libau were liberated by the Soviet army. On 18 May, they began their journey back to the Netherlands. Via Prague, Limburg and Eindhoven, Ronnie eventually arrived in The Hague and was reunited with her mother.^[26]

At the trial of SD officer Cornelis Kaptein, Ronnie van Cleef was among the witnesses. Kaptein was given the death penalty on 21 July 1949.^[27]

In 1949, Ronnie married Benjamin Jacques van Dijk (1921-2001) whom she divorced in 1968. In 1971, she married Fritz Goldstein (1921-2001).^[4]

To process her war trauma, Ronnie took up drawing and poetry. In 1990, she published her poems about the concentration camps in a book Een hoed vol liefde.

Source personal data.^[28]