Photographs related to the hiding of Fanny Kurc (Christine Tibika) Museum of the history of Polish Jews

Zamek and Raja Kurce were wealthy, so in the spring of 1942 they managed to organize the taking out of their four-year-old daughter Fanny from the Warsaw ghetto. At first, an unknown woman hid her for a few weeks (she went to work, so she was darkening the room, leaving the child alone), and in July Antoni and Zofia Wajcman took her in. By that time, the child was already called Krystyna, Krysia.

Zamek Kurc worked outside the ghetto, he had a pass, and sometimes, probably thanks to bribes, he managed to visit his daughter. Their last meeting, as Christine Tibika (Fanny Kurc) recalled in the report submitted to the POLIN Museum on 7 July 2019, took place after the death of her mother: the father confessed that in his absence she ended up at Umschlagplatz during the liquidation action, he told his daughter that he would try to escape. He died shortly thereafter.

Their adult children, Jadwiga, Stefan, Halina and Cecylia, together with their families, supported the Wajcmans in taking care of the girl and in hiding her.

Antoni and Zofia Wajcman lived in Grochów - in October 1939 they were allocated an apartment at 158 Grochowska st. At first, Krystyna was kept there, but later, as a result of a report by a neighbor, a doctor who lived in the main house on the first floor (the Wajcman family lived in an annexe), the child had to be moved: first to Halina Wajcman, and then to Cecylia and her husband Lucjan Janiszewski, who according to Krystyna's memoirs – were involved in the activities of the underground fighting. They moved, mainly because of the child, to Rembertów, where no one knew them (Lucjan started working as a hairdresser). They spread a rumor that Krystyna was the illegitimate child of Jadwiga Wajcman.

At the end of the occupation, Krystyna returned to the Wajcman family in Grochów, from where her father's cousin picked her up after the war. He later adopted her (see Christine Tibiki's collection of memorabilia: family and March photos).

Until her departure from Poland in 1969, Krystyna Kurc (in the 1960s carring the surname Niedziółka) maintained very close contacts with the Wajcman family. For last time they met during her visit to Poland at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s. The titles of Righteous Among the Nations were awarded to Antoni and Zofia Wajcman and Lucjan and Cecylia Janiszewski in 1979.

Przemysław Kaniecki