Mozes Polak, born in Steeenwijk on 15 April 1869, was a son of Benjamin Polak and Rebecca van der Velde. He married at the age of 33 in Culemborg on 13 August 1902 the 45-year old Henriëtte Wijzenbeek, born there on 28 April 1857 as daughter of Isak Wijzenbeek and Betsie Berlijn. The couple had no children.
Mozes was born into a family of five children, of whom two girls already within 12 months have died as babies. His brother Levie, born in 1858 passed away before the war in 1937. He was married to Elisabeth Kuijper who was born in Grave in 1861 and passed in Groningen on 28 January 1943, 81 years old. His sister Anna died at the age of 74 in Zwolle on 28 August 1940 as the widow of Salomon Brest.
Henriëtte came from a family of nine children, among them only Maurits Wijzenbeek who was murdered 31 August 1942 in Auschwitz-Birkenau. All other children, born between 1858 and 1873, have died young and/or already before the war and three children Wijzenbeek might have survived the war.
After their wedding in 1902, Mozes and his wife Henriëte Wijzenbeek remained living in Culemborg; in the Heerenstraat and later in the Tollenstraat. The Population Register of Culemborg shows that between October 1902 and December 1920 the Polak-Wijzenbeek couple had at least sixteen unmarried persons, ladies and gentleman, in their house as boarders, including Eva Beek, a suit dressmaker by profession. She came fom Amsterdam to Culemborg on 30 March 1911 and stayed there until 2 April 1915, after which she left for Enschede.
In January 1941 Mozes Polak and his wife were registered at the address Kattenstraat 20 bis in Culemborg. On 4 January 1941 Mozes Polak passed away in Amsterdam, 71 years old and his wife Henriëtte Wijzenbeek followed him the next months: she passed in Culemborg on 26 February 1941 at the age of 83.
Sources include the websites wiewaswie.nl, hetstenenarchief.nl and openarchieven.nl; Population Register of Culemborn and the Regional Archive Rivierenland.