Maurice Rinde collection

Copyright Holder: Ms. Irene Skolnick Maurice Rinde was born in 1902 in Przemyśl, Poland, and was the youngest of seven children born to Orthodox Jews, Joseph and Amalia Rinde. His wife, Stella, whom he married in 1933, grew up in Tarnów, the youngest of three children. The Rindes had a son John (b. 1935) and daughter Irene (b. 1937). After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Przemyśl fell under Soviet occupation until 1941. The family moved to Lviv where Maurice worked as a bookkeeper. After the Nazi invasion of Lviv, the family had to move into the ghetto. In early 1942, Stella decided the family should pose as Aryans and obtained papers under the name "Kroczykowski." Kroczykowski was the name of family friends in Przemyśl who allowed Maurice and Stella to use their birth certificates and other identifying documents to obtain identity cards. Though they had false papers, Maurice and the children went into hiding while Stella worked at a honey factory across the street from the Janowska concentration camp. They escaped to Lublin where Maurice found work as a bookkeeper. Maurice's brother, Henry and his wife Lonka, escaped Lviv and joined the Rindes in Lublin, where they went into hiding in Maurice and Stella's apartment. Henry and Lonka's daughters, Fila and Roma, left the convent where they had been hiding and joined their parents hiding in the apartment. There were eight people in the apartment: four in hiding and four using Aryan papers. In 1943, they moved to a house in the suburbs and three more members of the family: Maurice's older sister Enia and her daughters Fela and Stella, joined them. After the liberation of Lublin in July 1944, Maurice took a job at the former Majdanek concentration camp, working with the Soviet forces who were bringing people in for tours of the camp. In February 1946, the family moved to France, and in 1952, to the United States. The Maurice Rinde collection consists of five photographs, two identity cards, one letter, and some photocopies of the Rinde family, originally of Przemyśl, Poland. The photographs are pre-war and wartime family photos and copies of photos; the identity cards are under Maurice and Stella Rinde's false identities as Genowefa and Wiktor Kroczykowski (two original cards and photocopies of additional cards); the letter, written by Maurice Rinde, promises a rescuer that a relative in the United States will reimburse expenses for those in hiding should Mr. Rinde not survive the war. Also includes one bound memoir, 106 pages, entitled "My Experience during the II World War," by Maurice Rinde (alias Wikotow Kroczykowski), originally of Przemysl, Poland. In his memoir, he describes life under Soviet occupation, the 1941 German invasion, temporarily placing his children in hiding, and eventually escaping with his wife and children to Lublin, where they lived under false Aryan identities. He describes his attempts to hide and aid fellow Jews and some incidents in which he was denounced or his true identity was suspected.