Irma de Jong Tworoger was born in the tiny village of Wieschowa near the town Gleiwitz (Gliwice) in the ‘German Reich’.

The parents and their two children Irma and Hugo moved to Gleiwitz where the father opened a retail shop.

However, Irma's mother died tragically in 1908 when Irma was only twelve and her brother fourteen.

Their father got remarried and in 1911 a new daughter was born, but the second marriage didn’t last very long. In 1939 Irma's half-sister escaped to Palestine where she died in 1961.

The father left Gleiwitz not long after the divorce from his second wife, presumably taking his two older children with him, in order to live in Berlin.

Irma’s brother Hugo served in the German army and fell 1917 at the age of 23 somewhere in France. His grave is not known.

In December 1921 Irma got married in Berlin to the musician Julius de Jong, and shortly thereafter they came to Holland. The couple didn't have any children.

Irma’s father married in 1920 for a third time in Berlin and had two more sons. One of Irma's halfbrothers was murdered in January 1945 in Buchenwald at the age of 24, the other survived the war and lived in the German Democratic Republic. In the year 2000 he died in the reunited Berlin.