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

Fringed, pink, challah cover that belonged to Louise Lawrence-Israel's family and was buried for safekeeping before they left Haarlem, Netherlands, and went into hiding in Amsterdam in January 1943. The cover, a special cloth used to cover the two braided loaves of challah bread at Sabbath dinner, was embroidered with a Hebrew passage, "Eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a good heart," from Ecclesiastes 9 : 7. Germany occupied the Netherlands on May 10, 1940. In January 1943, the family went into hiding. In late 1943, it became too dangerous to house the family together. With assistance from the Dutch underground, part of the family moved to a different hiding place. Amsterdam was liberated by the Canadian Army on May 5, 1945. Some family members returned to Haarlem, and recovered the cover after the war ended. Other family members had gone to Sweden, and the relatives did not learn that they were all alive until 1948. Many other family members were killed during the Holocaust.