Salomon Van Messel (1892–1945)
Salomon Van Messel was born in Harlingen on 21 May 1892, to Barend and Rachel (née de Winter), the first of four children. In August 1916, he married Marie née Swaab in Rotterdam. After the birth of their children, Reina Lea (1918) in Hague and Leo (1920) in Koekelberg, Belgium, the family settled in Rotterdam, where Salomon worked as a senior official.
In May 1944, Salomon Van Messel was deported together with Marie, Reina Lea and Leo to the Westerbork transit camp. His mother and siblings were also deported there, and did not survive.
In September 1944, Salomon, his wife and two children were deported to Bergen-Belsen. Salomon was murdered on 15 January 1945. Hi son Leo was murdered in March, and his wife Marie in April 1945. His daughter Reina Lea was liberated at Bergen Belsen in 1945, and later donated her father's portrait to the Yad Vashem Art Collection.
Leo Kok (1923–1945)
Born in Berchem, Belgium. Kok studied applied graphics at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, and then worked in a studio for theater backdrops. After the Germans occupied Belgium in 1940, he and his brother fled to the Netherlands, while their parents found refuge in Suriname. In 1942, he was transported to the Geesbrug camp and from there to the Westerbork camp, where he worked in the stage design workshop for camp performances, at the same time painting scenes of daily life in the camp. In 1943, he married Kitty de Wijze, a camp nurse, and they were deported to the Terezin ghetto in September 1944. About a month later, Kok was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and then sent on death marches to the Mauthausen and Ebensee camps, where he was liberated on 6 May 1945. Six days later he died, at the age of 22. Kok’s paintings, entrusted with a Westerbork camp policeman for safekeeping, were given to his widow after the war.