Magdalena Gross was born in 1981 in Warsaw. Her parents were Norbert Gross and Róża née Okręt, a family of rabbis, merchants, lecturers, booksellers, publishers and journalists. Rudolf Okręt attended the Warsaw Rabbinical School (Warszawska Szkoła Rabinów), where he supported the assimilation of the Jewish population into the Polish nation, while Magdalena's uncle was the editor-in-chief of "Nowa Gazeta" - Stanisław Aleksander Kempner.
The future artist attended a lower high school Zofia Wroblewska-Kurmanowa's Humanities Gimnazjum in Warsaw (Gimnazjum Żeńskie Filologiczne Zofii z Wróblewskich Kurmanowej). Then, she continued her education at the Warsaw School of Fine Arts, where she studied together with Tadeusz Breyer, among others. She was interested in animal and portrait sculpture as well as handicraft and presented her works at exhibitions in Warsaw: in Zachęta and the Art Propaganda Institute (Instytut Propagandy Sztuki) and at the International Art Exhibition in Paris.
After the outbreak of war and the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto, she remained on the Aryan side under the nickname of Gościmska. Later on, she decided to live in hiding. Her first refuge was the villa of Jan and Antonina Żabiński, with whom she had been friends since the 1930s. She met her future husband there, a lawyer Maurycy Fraenkel (nickname Paweł Zieliński). Sadly, due to rumours from ZOO employees, they had to change their place of hiding and, thanks to "Żegota", they ended up in Saska Kępa with the Rendzner family. In 1944, Magdalena married Paweł Zieliński, with whom, in October of the same year, she made her way to the already liberated Lublin. She took on the job of designing puppets for the puppet theatre of Jan Sztaudynger and Stanisława Zakrzewska. The couple returned to Warsaw in 1945, where the artist died in mid-1948.
Maurycy Fraenkel was a doctor of law of Jewish origin. In the Warsaw Ghetto, he worked in the tax department of the Judenrat but wanted to escape to the Aryan side. He asked his friend Jan Żabiński to help him do so, and he succeeded at the beginning of 1943. He stayed on the territory of the Warsaw Zoo (nickname Paweł Zieliński), later on, together with Magdalena Gross, he stayed in Saska Kępa. After the end of the Warsaw Uprising, they both went to Lublin, where, as Paweł Zieliński, he worked as a legal adviser at the Ministry of Finance (he never used his real name). After the end of the war and his return to Warsaw, he helped Antonina Żabińska and arranged financial support for her. After Magdalena's death, he married again - with Krystyna Amelia Zembrzuska primo voto Xiężopolska (1907-2010) - a participant in the Warsaw Uprising and a clerk.
The archival collection is dominated by various photographs. Some of them are photos from Magdalena Gross's trip to Italy, there are also studio portraits and some family photographs. Most of the photographs are placed in a small photo album by Kodak. Additionally, the collection is supplemented by print-outs and Magdalena Gross's ZAiKS membership card. | Urszula Celińska-Olszewska.