Siegfried Bloemendal was born on February 22, 1880 in the Dutch town of Winschoten/ Province of Groningen which in those days was where the second-biggest Jewish community in the Netherlands was to be found. He was the ninth of the eleven children of the butcher Izaak Marcus Bloemendal and his wife Rosette Polak. Siegfried learned his father’s trade and also worked as a butcher. 

In March 1910, he moved from Ober-Ingelheim to Bad Kissingen, where he lived with his wife Fanny Neustadt from Hamburg and his sons Manfred and Josef in Grabengasse 8 for 22 years. There he ran a milk drinking hall with vegetarian cuisine. In March 1932, he moved to Theresienstrasse 5 (now 10) with his family. 

After the Nazis had seized power in 1933, he was temporarily taken into protective custody. This imprisonment must have been a terrible experience and must have convinced him that his family wouldn’t have any kind of future under the new authorities. Therefore, the 53-year-old man decided to return to his place of birth Winschoten in November 1933. Later he lived in Arnheim in Driekoningenwarsstraat 87. But after the invasion of the German army into Holland he was no longer safe there. Bloemendal was taken to the transit camp of Westerbork and deported to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1943. There he died on September 10, 1943. At least four of his brothers and sisters were deported from the Netherlands and killed.

(Andreas Reuter, slightly expanded)