Birthday card sent to Israel-based Elina Kupperman by Jadwiga Marciniak, her teacher from Oświęcim, Poland. For years, Jadwiga exhanged letters with her former student Elinka and her parents, Holocaust survivors Salomon (Shlomo) and Regina. The Kuppermans also sent birthday and nameday cards to their acquaintance in Poland. Born in 1949, Elina was one of the few Jewish children born after WW2 in the town of Oświęcim, the site of the former German Nazi concentration camp. Before the war, Jadwiga Marciniak (1898–1981), was a teacher at a local primary school, named after Jadwiga of Poland, a late-fourteenth century Queen of Poland. During Nazi occupation, Marciniak resisted by being involved in underground teaching, offered also to Jewish children, among others Henryk Enoch and Anna Lehrhaft. Altogether, in the course of the war she taught 37 pupils, with whom she met in small groups in a number of different secret locations, keeping the entire operation undetected by the authorities. Underground teachnig was also practised and organised by her husband – Stefan Matlak. After being arrested by the Nazi Germans, Matlak was imprisoned in among others Dachau and Mauthausen, where he was murdered in 1941. This did not deter Marciniak from further underground teaching. Shlomo Kupperman and his wife Regina Grünbaum were residents of Oświęcim, their hometown. Before WW2, she was an activist involved in Akiba, a Zionist youth organisation. In 1941, she was relocated to Sosnowiec, and then to a number of Nazi German camps: Annaberg, Gross Rosen, Mauthausen, and eventually Bergen-Belsen, from which she was liberated. After the war, she returned to her hometown and married Salomon Kupperman, whom she acquainted in the 1930s, when he was part of the World Zionist Labour Party Hitahdut (Hebrew: unity). With the outbreak of the war, alongside his brother, he headed eastwards, reached the Soviet Union, and spent the wartime in Syberia and Uzbekistan. After their return to Oświęcim, Regina and Salomon were actively involved in the rebuilding of the local Jewish life, working with a number of organisations and supporting the recently developed structures of postwar life. Their Jewish wedding took place in 1948 in Wałbrzych, followed by a civil one in Oświęcim a year later. The Kuppermans resided at 1 Parkowa Street in Oświęcim. Salomon worked in the Chemical Plant in the town as an office clerk. Their daughter Elinka, courtesy of whom the present photograph is on display, was born in 1949. She attended a local primary school, named after Jadwiga of Poland, a late-fourteenth century Queen of Poland. In 1962, the Kupperman family decided to leave for Israel. First, they reached Italy, and then they travelled by sea to Haifa. Finally, they settled in Holon. Once in Israel, they did not forget about their hometown, working in an association made up of former residents of Oświęcim (Irgun Jocej Oświęcim). Salomon was its treasurer. They also cultivated close relationships with their Oświęcim-based friends, including Jadwiga Marciniak. Marciniak was also the teacher of their daughter Elinka and both exchanged letters for years. To this day, Elinka Shaked (married name) visits her hometown.
