Clara Asscher-Pinkhof

Clara Asscher-Pinkhof was born in 1896 in Amsterdam

Clara Pinkhof was born in 1896 in Amsterdam, one of 8 children of the doctor Hermanus Pinkhof and his wife Adele. Her sister was the composer Miriam Shatal. She began writing poems for Dutch children's magazines at 14.

She studied at a teachers' college and worked as a teacher. In 1919 she married Rabbi Abraham Asscher and moved to Groningen, where they had 6 children. After his death in 1926 she stayed there and wrote for newspapers.

After the German invasion in 1940 she returned to Amsterdam and taught in Jewish schools. She also cared for Jewish children held before deportation. In 1943 she was arrested and sent to Westerbork, and in 1944 to Bergen-Belsen. Two of her children were killed in the camps.

In 1944 she reached Palestine in a prisoner exchange with Germany. She taught at Kibbutz Ma'ayan Zvi and later taught adults in Netanya. In 1946 she published Star Children, stories about Jewish children in the Holocaust.

The book won the German Children's Literature Award in 1962. She gradually began writing in Hebrew, and in 1966 wrote her autobiography, Dancer Without Legs. She died in Haifa in 1984.