Shifra Senderowicz. Collection

Shifra Senderowicz lives in Antwerp with her husband Jeremy Sulzbacher, whom she married in London. Shifra's parents are Isaac Senderowicz and Marie Grünberger. Her father Isaac (born 5 October 1931, Sędziszów) originally lived in Poland. From 1939 to 1945, he was interned at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Nazi Germany. In 1945, Isaac and his father Mendel (born 16 June 1903, Wodzislaw) were liberated from this camp by the American soldiers. They ended up as refugees in Switzerland, together with his mother Chasa/Chaja (born 16 December 1895, Burcza) who managed to flee to France during the war. The rest of his family, of which only Mendel's parents Gitl. Weingarten and Jacob Senderowicz are known to us, were murdered during the Second World War. After the war, Isaac met his later wife Marie Grünberger. They married each other in 1965 in Manhattan. The parents of Marie Grünberger (born 11 April 1940, Antwerp) are Jenö (or Jano or Evzen) Grünberger and Cecilia Stern. Father Jenö Grünberger (born 13 August 1908, Hanaskow, Hungary) had the Czechoslovakian nationality just like his family. All other members of his family seem to have stayed in Czechoslovakia, like his brother Herman Grünberger. Mother Cecilia Stern (born 4 December 1909, Nižný Komárnik, Prešov, Hungary) had the same nationality. Her parents were Nuchem Szulim, born in 1874 in Stropkoff, Slovakian and Mariem Maj, born in 1876 in Smolnik, Slovakia. They died respectively in 1937 and 1933. Cecilia Stern immigrated from Uzjhorod (Ungvar) in Hungary to Cologne in Germany, after which she came to Belgium on 17 May 1933 , together with her two sisters Bulca and Lenka. Her two brothers Isidor and Elias came to Belgium on earlier dates, respectively on 11 January 1928 and on 29 June 1930. Isidor Stern was born on 10 October 1902 in Samok, Bulgaria. Originally he settled in Belgium at Dolfijnstraat 71, Antwerp. Isidor worked as a diamond cutter and on 18 July 1939 got married to Fradla Fastag. Fradla was born on 8 March 1910 in Pruszków, Poland, to her father Chaskel, born on 20 June 1881 and mother Gutowicz Riwka Laja, born on 15 September 1886 in Pruszków, Poland. During the war, Fradla was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her husband Isidor fled with his and her family to France and later Switzerland. The couple had two children: Nuchem, born on 20 August 1940 in Toulouse, and Myriam, born on 6 June 1942 in Perigueux. In 1952 they received the statute of UN refugee, and on 14 April 1959 Isidor died in Berchem, Belgium. In 1977 his wife Fradla took on the Belgian nationality. Elias Stern, the other brother of Cecilia Stern, was born on 29 June 1930 in Uzhorod, Czechoslovakia (now Oejzhorod in Ukraine). Once in Belgium in 1930, he initially lived in the Kleine Hondstraat in Antwerp. He was a church singer in a synagogue close by. In 1941 Elias was scrapped from the city register. After the war Elias had become a citizen of Israel. His wife was Dora Hadissa Schächter, born on 26 October 1916 in Frankfurt/Main to her father David, born on 28 August 1887 in Ladshut, Poland but in 1937 living in Frankfurt at Wittelsbachalle 11, and her mother Knoplich Erna, born on 10 March 1894 in Krakow, Poland. Elias Stern and Dora Hadissa Schächter have two children: Miriam, born on 13 September 1941 in Saliagnac, France, and Nathan, born on 18 September 1951 in Tel Aviv. In 1957 the family settled in Antwerp. Dora Hadissa had already stayed in Belgium in 1937 when she obtained permission to be treated for malaria at a tropical institute in Antwerp. This treatment dragged on and the administration was bothered because her residence permit of two months had expired and she did not leave the country at first. She came from Palestine and apparently it was not easy for her to return. Her homeland Germany, she was no longer welcome there. At first she did not get a visa for the Netherlands either. In May 1938 she left for Luxembourg, in June 1938 she stayed briefly in the Netherlands and in January 1939 she reappeared in Antwerp. There she was de-registered from the municipality in 1941. In 1966 the family obtained Belgian nationality and in 1969 they returned to Israel. The first sister of Cecilia Stern, Lenka, was born on 12 July 1919 in Urzhorod, Czechoslovakia (now Oejzhorod in Ukraine). When she came to Belgium she first lived with her brothers at Mercatorstraat 24 in Antwerp. After 1941, it is only known that she had been deported to a concentration camp via Drancy. The second sister of Cecilia Stern, Bulca (or Bulcu), also went to live at first with her brothers and sisters at Mercatorstraat 24 in Antwerp when she arrived in Belgium. On 10 January 1939 in Antwerp, Bulca married Baruch Spira, born on 3 February 1910 in Sokol, who had himself arrived in Belgium on 22 November 1928 and lived at Provinciestraat 96 in Antwerp. Baruch was the son of Chaim Gorlice and Estera Gorowitz, born in 1928 in Krakow and lived at Schipgasse 18 in Nyirejhara, Hungary. Bulca and Baruch have two children: Salomon, born on 29 October 1940, and Eveline, born on 27 February 1943. Baruch Spira was detained at the Condette camp where he worked as a forced labourer for Julius Berger, a subcontractor of the German Organisation Todt, responsible for the building of the Atlantic Wall. On 28 October 1942, Baruch was registered in Condette on the deportation list of Transport XVI as number 423, departing on 31 October in 1942, and he perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1954 Bulca received the statute of being a UN refugee. She died in 1981. Jenö Grunberger himself only arrived in Belgium on 11 January 1936. He became a book printer, Cecilia Stern was without a profession. They married each other on 9 January 1940 in Antwerp, where they also had their first and last known home together at Kleine Beerstraat 33. Marie was born exactly one month before the occupation by Nazi Germany, on 11 April 1940. Of the Grünberger-Stern family nothing is known about their activities during the occupation. The family was registered in the Association of Jews in Belgium (AJB) on 12 March 1942, with the registration number 70411 for Jenö and 29367 for Cecilia. For the Register of Jews in Belgium on 13 December 1940 the designated numbers were 1742 and 1743 respectively. In the summer of 1942 Jenö Grunberger was requisitioned by the Nazis and forced to work as a labourer in the framework of Organisation Todt in Les Mazures, Northern France. He worked as number 719 for the French forestry and wood processing company Victor Vaisset (from Revin) and the German F.P. Scholzen (from Gerolstein), subcontractors of Organisation Todt. They used forced labourers for the entire process: from the felling of trees to the delivery of ready-to-use charcoal. It was only on 21 October 1942 that Jenö was "repatriated" to Belgium together with other forced labourers and immediately registered in the Dossin Barracks on the Transport List as number 171. The Sipo-SD again had difficulty filling its quota of Jews and therefore appealed to the workers. 234 of these were taken to Mechelen to complete the transport, where they joined Jews who had been arrested following house searches and tip-offs. Already on 24 October 1942 Jenö Grunberger was placed on Transport XV and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. 60.9% of the double transport XIV-XV were murdered immediately in the gas chambers after the selection on the Judenrampe, Jenö was not one of them. He received the number 70411. There is no more information about the time and circumstances of Jenö's final death in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Cecilia Stern and daughter Marie Grünberger had meanwhile gone into hiding in the Ardennes. However, no further context of their hiding is available. They both survived for the rest of the war. Cecilia remarried and emigrated with Marie to Israel, and sometimes came to Belgium again to visit family members in Antwerp. In 1956 Marie’s uncle, Mozes Walh, asked if she could stay with his family for a while. At that time she resided in Ramat-Gan, Israel. In 1957 Marie decided to stay in Belgium for longer and started studying to be a teacher in Jewish faith at the Jesodé-Hatora Beth-Jacob school in Antwerp. In 1959 she received Belgian nationality.

On 8 February 2022, Shifra Senderowicz kindly permitted Kazerne Dossin to digitise fifteen images, two documents and one article in this collection, as well as give a video-interview about her experiences and feelings.

Shifra Senderowicz