Cipa Wajncwajg. Collection

Cipa Wajncwajg was born in Warsaw, Poland, on 1st July 1905, as the daughter of Uszer Ber Wajncwajg and Chana Grujer. Both of Cipa’s parents died shortly after the First World War. She had a brother, Solomon, and a sister, Chaja Bela Wajncwajg (b. 14/10/1906 in Warsaw, Poland). While Solomon Wajncwajg managed to emigrate from Poland to Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bela settled in Belgium and Cipa in Germany. However, on 20 July 1926, Cipa emigrated from Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, to Belgium, where she first lived in Anderlecht, Brussels. She later on married Moszek Klainer (b. 04/10/1896 in Jedwo, Poland), a Polish photographer whom had emigrated from Poland to Belgium on 10 July 1922. The couple moved to Forest, Brussels, and had two children : Annie and Bernard. When in August 1942 the deportation of the Jews from Belgium began, it was Cipa, semi-protected by her Aryan appearance, who went out without the yellow badge to take care of her family’s needs. When Herz Ozarow (b. 23/03/1906 in Warsaw, Poland), the husband of Bela Wajncwajg, left for France and was subsequently arrested in August 1942, Cipa put her sister and nieces Anna (b. 08/07/1929 in Etterbeek, Brussels) and Bertha (b. 02/04/1937 in Etterbeek, Brussels) on a train at the Brussels south station. Chaja Bela Wajncwajg and her daughters were thus able to reach Switzerland, where they survived the war. Bela’s husband Herz Ozarow was arrested in France and perished after deportation from the Drancy transit camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Transport 27 on 2 September 1942. When returning home from the train station, on 6 September 1942, Cipa was arrested a few steps from her house, probably after denunciation by a neighbour. She was taken to the Dossin barracks from where she wrote two optimistic postcards to her family at Pierre Decosterstraat 6 in Forest, Brussels. While Moszek and both children survived the war in hiding – Annie Klainer was placed with Stéphanie Degulne in Mont-Saint-Guibert – Cipa perished after deportation via Transport IX on 12 September 1942.

Annie Klainer, daughter of Cipa Wajncwajg, permitted digitisation of the postcards during a visit to Kazerne Dossin in 2013.

Annie Klainer, daughter of Cipa Wajncwajg, 2013