Elly Moses photographs

Elly Moses was born Elly Rachel van Leeuwen on August 7, 1931 in the Hague, Netherlands, to Judith Degroot and Isaac van Leeuwen. Her family had lived in the Hague for generations, and her father owned a bicycle and small appliance shop. Elly contracted polio in 1935 and had to remain at home for most of the time following her illness though she probably attended public school briefly. Her younger sister Rachel (Chellie) was born in 1936. In May 1940, the Germans invaded the Netherlands, and the following year, Isaac volunteered to go to Westerbork (established in October 1939). He joined one of the first transports to the camp after believing a promise that in return his family would remain unmolested. He is believed to have been deported to Monowitz (Auschwitz III, established in October 1942) and perished there. Judith initially wanted to remain with her husband, but acquaintances in the underground convinced her to try to save her daughters. In 1942 Judith placed Elly and Chellie in hiding and spent the rest of the war working as a weapons courier for the Dutch resistance using false papers. Chellie, using the false name Loesje Frederiks, was placed with a Catholic family in a small town in the provenance of Limburg, and Elly was taken to live with a lawyer. He kept her locked in a closet for three weeks, and then she was taken to a farm run by a Dutch woman whose son had Down’s syndrome. This hiding place did not work out either, so Elly was next taken to Middleburg to a family whose name was ironically also van Leeuwen. Another Jewish girl who was also hiding there was rounded up during a raid on the home, so Elly was moved to a new hiding place. She thought her protector Mr. van Leeuwen was shot and killed but later learned that he died on March 9, 1944 from pneumonia after landing in an ice-cold ditch during a car accident caused by a German officer. Johannes and Katarina Maria den Hollander welcomed Elly into their home even though they had two young boys of their own, Cornelias Johannes (Cees) and Jan Jacob. Elly lived with them for a year and a half in Middleburg on Walcheren island. After some neighbors suspected that they were sheltering a Jewish child, the couple sent her to the home of a female children’s books author in Utrecht. Elly lived with her for three weeks until it was safe to return to the den Hollanders. The den Hollanders home was liberated in 1944, and Elly remained with them until all of the Netherlands were free in May 1945. Judith learned the whereabouts of her daughters from the underground and came to pick them up. Judith forbade Elly to maintain any contact with the den Hollanders, and Elly never spoke or wrote to them again until 1990, when another child survivor told her how to get in touch with them. Judith supported her daughters by working as a prison warden for female collaborators. In 1950 Elly married Louis Moses, another child survivor, and moved to Israel. They briefly lived in Chulia, a primarily Dutch kibbutz in northern Israel, and then moved to Haifa. They returned to Holland in 1956 and immigrated to the United States in 1957.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Elly Moses donated the Elly Moses photographs to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2004.