Gregory Frydman collection

Gregory Frydman was born on March 9, 1916 in Klintsy, Russia. He was a son of Aron Frydman (b. 1880 in Pinsk) and Anna Lieberman Frydman (b. 1890 in Pinsk). Aron was a bookkeeper and found employment in Klintsy, but immediately after the Soviet revolution the Frydman family returned to their native Poland and settled in Warsaw. Aron worked as a cashier for the Cunard Line shipping company in Warsaw, which was located on 144 Marszalkowska Street. Gregory had an older brother, Naum (b. 1910) who graduated from the Warsaw University with a degree in French literature. Their younger sister, Shulamit was born in 1925. The family resided in a rented apartment on Brzeska Street, in the Praga district of Warsaw. In 1933 Gregory graduated from a private high school in Warsaw and started to attend law school at the Warsaw University, from which he graduated in June 1938. On November 12, 1939 Gregory parted from his parents, sister and girlfriend, Danka Borensztajn, and together with his brother Naum went eastwards. The two brothers arrived in Pinsk, where Gregory found a job with the Soviet tax office and Naum moved to Rovno, where he became a school principal. Gregory was arrested in June 1940 and deported to a forced labor camp in the Karelia region. After fifteen months, in November 1941, Gregory was released from the camp and moved first to Nizny Novgorod and later to Leninabad in Tajikistan. He worked there as an accountant in a silk factory. On October 2, 1945 Gregory married Gusta Wincygster, who was born on July 25, 1919 in Lublin, Poland. The couple repatriated to Poland in May 1945. After the war Gregory learned that both of his parents and his youngest sister were forced into the Warsaw ghetto in 1940 and lived on Swietojerska Street. In July 1942 they were deported to Treblinka where they perished. Naum Frydman was murdered in June 1941 in Rovno. In August 1946 Gusta and Gregory Frydman left Poland and reached Paris, France. A few months later, they arrived in New York. Gregory became a successful certified public accountant and Gusta Winchester Frydman obtained her master’s degree in Social Work from Columbia University. Their daughter, Dr. Anne Frydman, was born in 1947. She married Stephen Dixon and had two daughters: Sophia and Antonia. Gusta Frydman died in March 2000.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Gregory Frydman (Grzegorz Frydman) donated this collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on 22 Jan. 2002.