MZ-50-O

This is the original Hebrew stamp of the treasurer of the Association of Former Residents of Oświęcim in Israel (Hebrew: Irgun Yocej Oświęcim), Shlomo Kupperman (1909-1978). On the initiative of the association, the Book of Remembrance of the Jews of Oświęcim – Sefer Oshpitzin – was published in Jerusalem in 1977. Today, a handful of former residents of Oświęcim living in Israel, together with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, meet each year on Holocaust Remembrance Day (Hebrew: Yom ha-Shoah) at the memorial monument in the Kirjat Shaul cemetery in Tel Aviv. The last president of the Association, Rachel Jakimowski, donated the seal to the Jewish Museum in Oświęcim. Shlomo Kupperman and his wife Regina Grünbaum came from Oświęcim. They both survived the Holocaust. Regina, a prewar activist with the Akiba Zionist youth organization, was deported in 1941 to Sosnowiec, and from there to camps: Annaberg, Gross Rosen, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated. Salomon, an activist with the left-wing Zionist party Hitachdut, and his brother fled east to the USSR at the outbreak of war. They stayed in Siberia and Uzbekistan. After the war, they both returned to Oświęcim. Although they had known each other since before the war, they did not get married until after their return to their hometown. They married religiously in 1948 in Wałbrzych, and civilly in Oświęcim a year later. The Kuppermans lived at 1 Parkowa Street and Salomon worked as an office worker at the Oświęcim Chemical Plant. Their daughter, Elina, born after the war, completed only six grades at the Queen Jadwiga Elementary School in Oświęcim, because she emigrated with her parents to Israel in 1962. The Kuppermans traveled by train to Warsaw, then to Italy, and from there by ship to Haifa. They settled in Holon.