From Two Jewish Questioners

Born in Amsterdam, Clara Asscher was raised in a religious family. Living in the Dutch village of Deil and working as a schoolteacher, she wrote stories that illuminated traditional Jewish life for young girls. She moved to Groningen in 1919 upon marrying Rabbi Abraham Asscher, who died in 1926. Asscher-Pinkhof continued to publish stories in Rozijntje van huis, Het Joodse Weekblad, and other Dutch children’s newspapers. After the war, she published Sterrekinderen (Star Children), a children’s story about the Holocaust and Bergen-Belsen (where she had been imprisoned), published in Palestine in 1946. She lived in Israel, where she continued to write children’s literature as well as her autobiography, Danseres zonder benen (Dancer without Legs, 1966).

Born in Amsterdam to an affluent Orthodox family, Leo Yehuda Pinkhof studied at the National School of Applied Arts at the Rijksmuseum starting in 1915, joining the Rijksacademie after graduating. Moving to Den Helder, where he lived most of his life, Pinkhof accepted a position teaching drawing at a local art school. He also worked as an illustrator, including for his sister Clara Asscher-Pinkhof, a well-regarded writer.