Lena was born in Kurland in around the year 1871. The Kurland Jewish population was mainly made up of aristocrats also known as Turkeys and Indick, in Yiddish. Lena’s family was of this class. Her father, Chaim was a butcher, farmer and banker. Her father passed away when she was a young child and her mother got remarried to a Mr Kahn. They had a three children Paul, Meyer and Chaya Kahn. Paul had a son named Sukki who lives in Cape Town. Lena also had two sisters from her mother’s first marriage, Samara and Annie. Lena’s husband Shlomo Yosef brought him (Paul) from Lithuania. Not much is known about her family – her siblings and half siblings. She got married to Shlomo Yosef Seider and went with him to Great Britain. In Rhodesia she brought up her eldest daughter Gertie’s four children from her first marriage. When Shlomo Yosef died 1943, she went to live with her daughters Gertie Blackman and Mary Lang in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She became non compos mentis at around the age of 92 and her daughters put her in the Cape Town Jewish old age home. She was nifter at the age of 94 on the 18th March 1965 and was buried in Cape Town.