David Tennenbaum papers

The David Tennenbaum papers consist of false identification papers for David and Fanny Tennenbaum and photographs of David and Fanny Tennenbaum and Fanny Tennenbaum’s father, Nachman Gruber. The false identification papers include two forged birth and baptismal certificates under the names Teresa and Franciszka Wieczorkowska, and an authentic identification card and change of address registration form using the same false names. Photographs include a tintype of Fanny Tennenbaum with her father and twelve prints of Fanny and David Tennenbaum documenting prewar family vacations in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the Tennenbaums’ time in hiding in Zimna Woda, and their postwar years in Krakow and Paris. One 1944 photograph shows David Tennenbaum in long braids and girl’s clothes while hiding in Zimna Woda. David Tennenbaum was born Dawid Tennenbaum in Lvov, Poland (now L’viv, Ukraine) in 1931 to fruit import/export business owner Jozef Tennenbaum and Fanny (Fradel Feige) Tennenbaum (née Gruber). In August 1942 the family was sent to the Kleparow ghetto outside Lvov. David and his mother escaped and found a temporary hiding place with the help of a Ukrainian professor and family friend. The professor secured false papers for them under the names Franciszka and Teresa Wieczorkowska, and in December 1942 they moved to a long term hiding place in Zimna Woda with an elderly, retired, schoolteacher named Jadwiga Sokolinska. David passed as a girl, having grown his hair long. Fanny was initially able to visit her husband in Kleparow, but he disappeared in the spring of 1943. After Zimna Woda was liberated in September 1944, David and Fanny moved to Krakow and then in 1946 to Paris. They immigrated to the United States in March 1951.