Mietje van Polen was a daughter of Isak van Polen and Sara Wijsenbek. She was born on 3 December 1875 in Culemborg and was the youngest of eight children. On 18 May 1899, she married in Amsterdam the diamond cutter Joseph Ephraim Lemans, a son of Liepman Joseph Lemans and Kitty Abrahams. Joseph was born in Amsterdam on 13 December 1874.
The Lemans-van Polen couple had four children, namely: Kitty on 30 September 1900, followed by Sara on 17 March 1905 and Elisabeth on 18 January 1907, all born in Amsterdam. Then a son Isaac was born, but he died very young on 17 April 1904. The Lemans family lived all this time in Amsterdam, where Joseph Ephraim Lemans died on 11 June 1936. On 14 June he was interred at the Jewish Cemetery in Muiderberg.
After the death of her husband, Mietje lived as a widow at Roerstraat 17, 1st floor in Amsterdam-Zuid, but moved to Rustenburgherweg 10 in Bloemendaal on 19 June 1940. During the mandatory registration of all Jews in the Netherlands, she was first registered at her address in Bloemendaal, but due to the obligation to move to Amsterdam, Mietje came to live at Geleenstraat 16 in the River district of Amsterdam-South in 1941/1942.
Of the Lemans children, Sara, and probably also her sister Elisabeth, survived the Holocaust. Izak had died young in 1904 and only Kitty, her husband Maurits Hijmans and their two children Paul and Mieke were murdered during the Shoah.
In a transport of a total of 1988 victims, Mietje Lemans-van Polen was deported from Westerbork to Sobibor on 13 July 1943, where she - and all others - were murdered immediately in the gas chambers after their arrival there on 16 July 1943. There were no survivors.
Sources include the Amsterdam City Archives, Archive card of Mietje van Polen; SAA Closed Family registration cards with Lemans and van Polen; the file cabinet of the Jewish Council, registration cards of Mietje Lemans-van Polen; “Sobibor Extermination Camp"/transport list 13 July 1943/Mietje Lemans-van Polen, 2nd edition, published 1994 by Jules Schelvis; death certificate 3195 from register 5-68verso of year 1936 for Joseph Ephraim Lemans; websitestenenarchief.nl/grave Joseph Ephraim Lemans no.38585 and the Wikipedia website Jodentransporten uit Nederland.nl/13 July 1943.