The family of Isidor Pinkus came to Dortmund after the First World War when their original home region of Posen (now Poznan) became part of Poland.
From 1920, Isidor Pinkus initially lived with his sister Paula Günther, née Pinkus, and her husband Fritz Günther at Sonnenscheingasse 12. In August 1922, he moved to live with his mother Dorothea Pinkus and sister Regina Pinkus at Adlerstrasse 101.

On marrying his wife, Else Vogelsang, on 5 December 1929, Isidor left his mother’s home and took up residence with his new wife at Oesterholzstrasse 25.
On 3 January 1931, their son Hermann Pinkus was born in Johannes-Hospital. On 17 July 1931, the family moved to a new home at Heroldstr. 43.
This is where the known chain of events in the life of the family in Dortmund ends. It is assumed that they left Germany soon after the accession to power of the Nazis. At any rate, the second child, a daughter, Fanny, was already born in Amsterdam, on 2 August 1934.

The family were interned in Westerbork. They were deported to Auschwitz on 9 February 1943, where the mother and children were murdered immediately after their arrival. The date of their death is taken to be 12 February 1943.
Isidor was selected in Auschwitz for slave labour and survived the Holocaust. He was sent from Auschwitz to Buchenwald and was liberated on 23 April 1945 in Wittenberg while on one of the death marches.
In 1945, he came back to Brackel for four months, but then returned to the Netherlands. He left Europe towards the end of 1945. In the 1950s, he was living in New York.