Embroidered pink silk hallah cover buried for safekeeping while the owner was in hiding

Sandor Israels was born in 1880 in the Netherlands. He married Ernestine Polak, daughter of Sandor Yoel Polak and Betje Engers, and they settled in Amsterdam. They had one son, Jozef, born in 1909, and one daughter. Sandor and Ernestine were religious, but became less so as their children grew up, though they continued to observe Jewish traditions. Sandor owned a chain of women’s clothing stores, and his son, Jozef, helped manage the stores throughout the country.

After the German occupation of the Netherlands on May 10, 1940, the family business was confiscated because they were Jewish. In July 1942, the Germans began large scale deportations of Jews to extermination camps in occupied Poland, primarily Auschwitz and Sobibor. In January 1943, Jozef, his wife, Carry, their 2 year old son, Sandor, and their 6 month old daughter, Louise, were ordered to move to Amsterdam from Haarlem, Netherlands. Sandor, Ernestine, and the family’s neighbor, Selma Chappone, moved into a small apartment with Jozef and his family in Amsterdam, where a colleague of Jozef’s from the army also lived with his wife and two children. Sandor’s daughter had converted to Catholicism through marriage and her in-laws were hiding her. Shortly after, Jozef managed to acquire false identification papers for his family, including Sandor, Ernestine, and Selma. With assistance from friends and the Dutch underground, he found a place for them to live on the fourth floor of a row house. Jozef was the only one who left the small attic apartment; he went out after curfew to get food and medicine. Food was often scarce, and Jozef sold his collection of valuable personal belongings, including art and artifacts, for food. The family also relied on friends in the underground to provide basic necessities. One day, some German officers and Dutch collaborators came to the apartment to check identification papers, but as Sandor and young Louise both had blonde hair, blue eyes, and did not look Jewish, the family did not raise suspicion.

Jozef was very insistent that no one ever answer the door or look out the windows. One day, he saw his mother waving from a window and he decided that it was too dangerous for everyone to be housed together. In late 1943 or early 1944, Sandor and Ernestine were moved to a different address in Amsterdam, where they lived for the duration of the war. Amsterdam was liberated by Canadian forces on May 5, 1945. Sandor and Ernestine returned to Haarlem. They found out that their daughter also had survived the war, but they did not know what had happened to Jozef and his family. Sandor was trying to re-establish his business and travelled to Stockholm, Sweden, around 1947. Sandor went to visit a friend who had a factory there and discovered that Jozef was working there. The two reconciled and, in 1948, Jozef returned with his family to the Netherlands. Sandor and Ernestine lost nearly 70 family members during the Holocaust.

Louise Israels was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands, in 1942. German forces had invaded the Netherlands in May 1940 and set up a German administration. The Nazi's also confiscated the family business. By the time Louise was born, anti-Semetic laws were enacted and Jews were forced to wear a yellow star. By July of 1942 deportations of Jews from the Netherlands to the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor had begun.

In January 1943 Louise and her family were ordered to move to Amsterdam, and shortly thereafter went into hiding to escape deportation. Louise's father managed to rent a top floor apartment and acquired false identification papers for the family. Louise's father had to leave the apartment after curfew to get food and medicine for the family; sometimes he brought home news about the war.

Louise's parents tried to give their children a "normal" childhood in hiding; playing and learning colors, letters, and songs. It was in this apartment that Louise learned to walk. When air raid alarms sounded, the family took refuge on the steep staircase, the strongest and safest part of an Amsterdam row house. Louise's mother had an emergency basket ready to take with them during air raids.

On May 5, 1945, Canadian forces liberated Amsterdam. Louise was three years old. Louise initially had difficulty adjusting to a world without walls, having never been outside for the duration of the hiding. After the war, the family did not talk about their life in hiding. Shortly thereafter Louise's father found work in Stockholm, Sweden; Louise, her mother, brother and baby sister joined him during the winter of 1946. The Israels family moved back to the Netherlands in 1948. Louise earned a degree in physical therapy in the Netherlands and in 1965 she married Sidney Z. Lawrence, an American medical student in Amsterdam. They moved to the United States in 1967. After Sidney retired from the U.S. military in 1994, they settled in Bethesda, Maryland. Louise volunteers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.