Izaak Schachter. Collection

Izaak Schachter was born in Kolomyia, Poland, now Ukraine, on 25 May 1891, as the son of David and Frida Schachter. Izaak became a successful fur dealer and emigrated to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He obtained Dutch nationality in 1929 and travelled back and forth between Amsterdam and Brussels, Belgium, for his fur business during the pre-war years. On 22 April 1930, he married Anna Catherine Deneu (b. 07/07/1889 in Dworp, Belgium), a non-Jewish Belgian woman who had previously divorced Jacques Somers, the father of her daughter Jeanne Somers. The couple moved from Brussels to Amsterdam in the mid-1930s, but Izaak Schachter continued to travel back and forth to Belgium. After the occupation of Belgium and the Netherlands in May 1940, Izaak and dozens of other Jewish fur merchants were officially employed by the Wehrmacht in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, to buy rabbit and cat fur for the production of German uniforms. At the beginning of 1943, Izaak obtained permission from the Zentralstelle in Amsterdam to travel to Belgium again. He was, however, arrested and then taken to the Dossin barracks, where he was first treated as an E or Entscheidung (decision) case on account of his marriage to a non-Jewish woman and because of his employment by the Wehrmacht. Via mail, he requested and received all possible forms proving the non-Jewish decent and catholic baptism of his wife Anna Deneu. To no avail. In April 1944, Izaak’s name was added to the deportation list of transport XXI. He did not survive deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 31 July 1943. His wife Anna, step-daughter Jeanne and step-grandchildren Raymond and Lucienne all survived the war.

Jeanne Somers, stepdaughter of Izaak Schachter, and her granddaughter Gina Van Nerum permitted digitisation of the documents in this collection during a visit to Kazerne Dossin in 2013.

Jeanne Somers, stepdaughter of Izaak Schachter, 2013