Three Rochussenstraat households in the ERR register

The Möbelaktion, literally the "furniture operation," was part of the occupation's machinery for emptying the homes of deported Jews and of those in hiding: their contents were inventoried and the goods sent to Germany. In Rotterdam the records of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, the ERR, are filed alphabetically by street, and a search of their structured index returns three Rochussenstraat entries from 1942¹.

Three households, surveyed in 1942

All three indexed entries date from the late summer or autumn of 1942. On 17 August, at no. 177, the field headed Ambtenaren (officials) names G. v.d. Laan and H. Waalewijn beside Joseph Olman, a household of two, with the remark "Olman wohnte mobiliert, hat nur Kleider und Leibwäsche": Olman lived in furnished accommodation and has only clothes and underclothes². On 11 November, at no. 67b, the same field names H. Wilms and B. v.d. Puyl beside Bertha Sara Levy-Mai: "Bertha Sara Levy-Mai besitzt nur Kleider und Wäsche", Bertha Sara Levy-Mai possesses only clothes and linen³. On 25 November, at no. 345a, it names A. Wagenaar and J. Pelser beside N. v. Amerongen, with "Besitzt nur Leibwäsche und Kleider. Ist nicht evakuiert.": possesses only underclothes and clothes; has not been evacuated⁴.

Elsewhere on the street, at no. 77, Abraham Tuschinski had lived before he was deported to Westerbork in September 1942; he died at Auschwitz that same month⁵.

A Stadsarchief Rotterdam Beeldbank image from 1937–40 shows, from a distance, the Rochussenstraat at the 's-Gravendijkwal corner. Its rights are currently recorded as reserved, with permission needed before publication, so it is not shown here⁶.

No. 169 is not among them

The searchable index returns three Rochussenstraat results, and no. 169 is not one of them; the nearest is Joseph Olman's entry at no. 177⁷. It shows only that the address is missing from the captured search result. It does not say why, and it says nothing about every page of the 366-page register, which was not read page by page.

No. 169 was more than a shop. Johan Andries van Duijn's household had lived at 169b since December 1931⁸. At the turn of 1942 into 1943, Mevr. van Duijn of Rochussenstraat 169 advertised for a dienstbode, a maid; in October 1943 she advertised again, this time for a live-in maid and a charwoman together. Both ads gave the corner's 30047 line:

So during the occupation a household at the address was looking for domestic help, openly, in the press.

The firms, and the null

The corner raises a second question, which needs its own answer. The Möbelaktion relied on removal and storage firms to clear homes and warehouse the goods. Fa. J. A. van Duyn traded from no. 169 throughout the occupation. After the bombardment of 14 May 1940 destroyed P. van Reeuwijk's city-centre store, the firm's Maatschappij voor Woninginrichting opened temporary showrooms at no. 169 on 23 May 1940. Its new emergency store on the Nieuwe Binnenweg opened in September, yet a December notice still gave no. 169 as the company's office, and the records do not fix when retail use at the corner ended^9 10. Did either firm take part in the Möbelaktion's removals or storage?¹¹

A bounded capture of the NIOD index searched selected transcribed fields across all four Rotterdam inventories. Four indexed handover receipts name storage firms in their remarks: Kooyman twice, Hollander once, Muntinga once. The Kooyman and Muntinga remarks give Nieuwe Haven 145, though they place it inconsistently in Rotterdam or Schiedam, and the Hollander remark gives no address. Neither van Duyn nor van Reeuwijk appears in these four receipts¹².

Name searches for Duyn and for Reeuwijk returned nothing in any of the four inventory indexes. Those zeros cover selected searchable fields only; they do not prove the names are missing from every underlying page. The survey entries list personal names under Ambtenaren, but the indexed text does not show that these people were municipal employees, and the names do not identify removal contractors. A documented Delpher search pairing the firms' names with terms such as roofgoed, jodenvervolging, Liro and inboedel also turned up nothing relevant¹³.

The carrier-index capture records the search and its results:

One of the two firms faces a different wartime question, which must be kept apart from this one. On 2 August 1945 Het Parool reported that three directors of P. van Reeuwijk had been detained tot nader onderzoek, pending investigation, over a suspicion of collaboration that the notice attached to the firm¹⁴. A documented search of the digitised press for 1945–49 found no later report establishing the investigation's outcome¹⁵. Later notices show the firm trading and paying dividends, but they neither establish the outcome nor rule out an administration that went unreported¹⁶. The notice reports a suspicion, not a finding. The press search also concerns a general collaboration question, not the question of who carried goods for the Möbelaktion, and it is told in its own deep dive.

What remains is a null result, and no verdict.