Max van Straten was born on 15 January 1912 in Amsterdam, the son of a children’s clothing manufacturer Manus van Straten and his second wife Rachel de Rooij. He had two elder half brothers, Michel and Henri by his father’s first wife, Rachel’s younger sister, and a younger brother Rudolph, who emigrated to the United States in 1939. After his mother’s death in 1928, Max’s father remarried for a t…