Born in Paris into a family of Polish refugees, Dora Holzhandler was later sent to live with a foster family on a farm in Normandy. She returned to her Jewish family when she was 5 before the family moved to London in 1934. Though she endured the War in England, much of her extended family perished at Auschwitz. In 1948, she attended the Anglo-French Art School in St. John’s Wood.

Her childhood memories and Jewish roots permeate her work. Holzhandler’s innocent art is widely collected.