Dorota Grinberg papers

Helena Nunberg (born Chaja Bajla Glidman, 1911-1995) was born on February 19, 1911, in Łódź, Poland. Her father, Izrael Glidman, who was a “mohel” (ritual circumciser), died in 1926 and her mother, Dwojra Gutman Glidman, who was a seamstress, took care of Helena and her younger brother, Abram (b.1914). In 1936 Helena married Józef Lisek. In May 1940 she and her family were forced into the Łódź ghetto. Dwojra Glidman died in the ghetto in 1941. Helena, her husband, and her brother, Abram, were deported to the ghetto in Czestochowa, Poland, on October 21, 1942. On January 13, 1945, the Germans started to evacuate the camp and transfer prisoners to Buchenwald concentration camp. Only the prisoners who had hidden themselves, Helena and Józef Lisek among them, were liberated by the Red Army on Jan. 17, 1945.Abram was transferred to Buchenwald and perished there in 1945. Helena’s and Jòzef’s marriage ended in divorce. After the liberation Helena settled in Zabrze where she met her future husband, Marek Nunberg. They moved to Wrocław and later to Poznań. In December 1972 Helena, her husband and their daughter, Dorota, left Poland and settled in Denmark.

Marek Nunberg (born Mordechai Nunbergier, 1902-1974) was born on June 24, 1902 in Wolbrom, Poland. Marek’s father, Chaim Nunbergier, was a horse dealer and his wife, Chaja, took care of their eight children. Marek had four brothers and three sisters: Artur Alter (b. 1913), Wolf (b. 1911), Mosze, Menachem, Lea Laja, Fajga, and Mala. Lea and her husband, Dov Ber Frydberg, immigrated to Palestine in 1933. Fajga and her husband, Natan, immigrated to South Africa, before the war. Wolf and his wife, Karola, survived the war in the USSR. Arthur survived the war in hiding, but his first wife, Sala, and their son, Jurek, perished. Mala and her husband, Józef, were deported to a death camp and perished. Menachem Nunbergier together with his wife, Nacha, and two children perished as well. Mosze fought the Germans as a member of a partisan group and was killed in action. Marek’s parents, Chaim and Chaja Nunbergier, perished in the Wolbrom ghetto. In the 1930s Marek taught Hebrew, worked for his uncle in Będzin and later, together with his younger brother, Artur, managed a wool trading business. Marek’s first wife, Jadzia, and their daughter, Sara, perished during the war. In September 1939, Marek escaped eastward to the Soviet occupied region. He was arrested and sent to a labor camp in Komi SSR, but after the Polish Soviet treaty (July 1941), regarding the release of Polish citizens from Soviet labor camps and their mobilization into the Polish Army under the command of General Władysław Anders, Marek was set free. He traveled to Samarqand in Uzbekistan, which was one of the mobilization points, but was not accepted into the Polish military. In September 1944 Marek was mobilized into the military and participated in battles liberating Lublin, Warsaw, Pomerania region and crossed the River Oder into Germany. After the war he continued his military service in the Medical Corps of the Polish Army. He settled in Poznań with his wife, Helena, and their daughter, Dorota. In December 1972 Marek and his family left Poland for Denmark.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Dorota Grinberg

The papers were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Dorota Grinberg in 1999.