* Amsterdam April 18 1902
† Amsterdam May 7 1945
Elisabeth Lacourt was the daughter of street organ players Wilhelm Frederik Lacourt and Elisabeth Schuijt. She was married to Hendrik Stephanus Wieland. She lived in the Willemsstraat with her husband and three children. On that fateful day she and a neighbor went to the Dam. At the end of the day she had not returned and her husband asked two of their children to find out where she was. They found their mother in the Zuiderkerk, she had been killed instantly by a bullet from a German machine gun. Four days later she was buried at the Nieuwe Ooster Cemetery.
Truus Stoelinga(1928-2016), a cousin of Elisabeth explained:” we went with a group of friends to the Dam,we didn’t know that Betsie was there. We stood by Krasnapolsky when the shooting started and walked back via the Warmoesstraat to the Jordaan. When we arrived there, we heard the rumours that Betsie was killed at the Dam. I don’t know who went to the Dam to identify her. It was heartbreaking, she was such a sweet women!”
Elisateth is most left on this picture, made at Lindengrachtmarket, appr. 1935. Next to here mother in law. At the right: Truus Stoelinga
At the back of a portrait photo from Elisabeth, her youngest son Jan wrote a line as a memory to his mother,”died by a fatal accident at the Dam”. The eldest son Hein was send in the last year of the war to Germany for the Arbeitseinsatz. However, he returned to Amsterdam before May 7, were he had to identify his mother in the Zuiderkerk. His brother Jan send him this picture.
