Elisabeth Lea Root, born 21 June 1879 in Port Nassau in Lower Saramacca in Dutch Gyana, was a daughter of Mozes Root from Amsterdam and Leentje Frank from Utrecht. She was the 2nd of seven children of Mozes and Leentje, who were married in Paramaribo in 1875. There, in Surinam, her sisters Esther and Hanna Marie were born and also her brother Abraham Hartog.
When her parents with the family returned in The Netherlands in 1891, they lived just a short period in Amsterdam. There, her brother Alexander Leon was born but shortly thereafter they moved to Arnhem, in 1892 to Rheden and in 1895 they returned in Amsterdam, where in 1896 her brother Philip was born and in May 1898 her little brother Jacques Marcus, who however died in June of that year, only one month old.
Elisabeth Lea Root married in Amsterdam on 4 November 1903 the 28-year old peddler Isaäc Montanhes, a son of Abraham Montanhes and Rachel da Silva Abenatar. The couple had one daughter, Femmie, who wsa born 27 April 1910. The marriage however did not last and on 3 October 1910 it endcd by divorce.
Isaäc Montanhes remarried at the age of 47 in 1922 the 29-year old non-Jewish Alida van Vught and at that occasion he recognized their in 1921 born daughter Marianna. Isaäc Montanhes passed away on 25 January 1931 in Amsterdam.
Femmie Montanhes married in 1934 in Amsterdam Jacques Leonhard Léon, born 2 December 1904 in Den Haag and on 7 June 1935, their daughter Geertrui Jacoba was born. Jacques Léon however passed away already on 25 January 1940.
Femmie Léon-Montanhes and her daughter Geertrui Jacobo both were registered in Westerbork on 23 July 1942 and deported to Auschwitz on 31 July. On arrival there on 2 August they were both immediately murdered.
Sources amongothers”City Archive of Amsterdam, family registration cards of Joseph Zinger and Isaäc Montanhes, archive cards of Femmie Montanhes and Jacques Leonhard Léon and the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Femmie Léon-Monthanhes and Geertrui Jacoba Léon.