The engineer Samuel Bauer, the proprietor of an engineering office, was married to Gittel Breine, née Goldstein (née 1880 in Brody, Galicia). The couple lived from 1927 at Julienstraße 58 in Vienna's 18th district. After the annexation of Austria to the Nazi German Reich in March 1938, as Jews they were subject to increasing restrictions. They were forced in 1939 to give up jewellery, cutlery, tableware and furnishings to the Dorotheum. In April 1942 they were obliged to move to a "Sammelwohnung" (collective apartment) in Marc-Aurel-Straße in the 1st district. On 13 August 1942 they were deported as numbers 594 and 595 on transport XXXV to Theresienstadt ghetto, where Samuel Bauer was murdered on 22 December 1942. Gittel Bauer was transferred to Auschwitz on 23 October 1944 and murdered there at an unknown date.

Between December 1941 and January 1943 the Staatliches Kunstgewerbemuseum in Wien (State Arts and Crafts Museum in Vienna), now the MAK, acquired a number of silver objects from the Dorotheum, from the jewellery and precious metals that Jews had been required to turn in since 1939. Provenance research has identified two candlesticks as having belonged to Samuel and Gittel Bauer. They were restituted in 2013.