Esther (Lisa) was the eldest of 3 children of Joseph Povereny en Maria Brodsky. She had younger siblings: sister Anna and brother Sasha (Alexander Josipowitch). The Poverenys lived in Odessa and were well known; they owned a factory where high-quality hats were produced, straw hats for the summer, and fur hats for winter.
They ran 2 large warehouses in Odessa and Kiev and owned substantial real estate in Odessa. The Brodsky family owned a sugar factory. In 1917 the Bolsheviks took power and the Povereny family lost all its material wealth.
Esther must have been a good student: around 1906/8 she went to Paris and studied at the Sorbonne for some years. During this period she spent her holidays with family in Rotterdam as Odessa was too far away.
Esther was married for a short while to a Jew from Rotterdam (name??) and had a severely handicapped son. The marriage was an unhappy one and did not last long. However, after the divorce, Esther remained in Rotterdam, probably just before the start of world war I in 1914.
In 1924 her mother Maria, sister Anna (see: Joods Monument - Anna Kaplanskaia-Poverennaia - my grandmother), and niece Jusha fled Odessa and came to Rotterdam. Maria died in 1935. From then on Anna and Jusha lived with Esther in Rotterdam (Proveniersplein 1). After her marriage to my father, Idel Kremer on March 6 1941 my mother and father lived in Amsterdam. Esther and Anna remained in Rotterdam. They were caught in 1942 and put on transport to their deaths. My parents survived (my father returned from Auschwitz).