Halina Reinberg poses with someone dressed in a bear costume shortly before leaving Poland with her parents.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 43786

Date: 1939
Variant Locale: Litzmannstadt
Photo Designation: LIFE BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST -- Poland -- Family/Friends/Portraits -- At Home/In Town
Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Gloria L.K. Greengard

Biography: Halina Reinberg (later Bergen, later Krauss), the mother of the donor, was born in Lodz Poland in 1935 to Maurice Reinberg (later Bergen, 1904-1988) and Tola Chojnacka Reinberg (1910-2008). Maurice Reinberg was a classical cellist who also played piano, saxophone and clarinet. He his wife Tola and their daughter Halina (1935-1989) came to the United States in early 1939, just months before the outbreak of World War II. They settled in San Francisco where they changed the family name to Bergen.

Though Halina's immediate family was spared the Holocaust, her extended family was not as fortunate. Her maternal grandmother Gitla Goldberg Chojnacka (born in Piotrokow in 1879) and uncle, (Samuel Simek Chojnacki) both perished in the Holocaust. Samuel Chojnacki (born in Lodz in 1914) was able to leave Poland for Russia but returned to be with his mother Gitla and was murdered as a result. Josif Chojnacki, Gitla's husband, died before the Holocaust. Maurice's parents Nicolai Reinberg (born Mitau, Latvia, 1862) and Lea Levin Reinberg (born Moscow, 1869) also perished in the Holocaust.
Keyword: ANIMALS (BEARS)
CHILDREN/YOUTH
CLOSE-UPS
JEWS (POLISH)
WINTER SCENES
Photo Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Provenance: Gloria L.K. Greengard
: Record last modified: 2014-04-09 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1178523

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