The doctor's number

Häftling (prisoner) registration number issued to Dr Abraham Wajnryb in Schömberg concentration camp. A yellow rectangular strip is printed above a red inverted triangle beside the number 35529.

Abraham (Abrasha) Wajnryb was born on 7 October 1912 in Kielce, Poland. He graduated in medicine at the Warsaw University in 1936, then completed a year internship in the municipal Jewish Hospital and stayed on as assistant in the division of internal diseases. In 1939 he met Dr Nelly Gelman, the woman he was to marry in May that year. Almost immediately after he was mobilised into the Polish army and they were separated until January 1940. The Wajnrybs were forced into the Vilna ghetto in September 1941, and were there until 1943. Dr Wajnryb headed the infectious diseases department and supervised 'Operation Typhus'. Stringent protocols were implemented to keep the ghetto as healthy as possible. When the ghetto was liquidated, he was sent to Kivioli in Estonia, where he laboured in the coal mines, then was evacuated by sea to Stutthof where he logged trees. From there he was distributed as forced labour to Schömberg. On arrival he became prisoner 35529. In April 1945 he escaped from the camp.

After liberation he went back to Poland to find his wife. She had escaped from a transportation, had made her way back to Vilna and using forged documents survived on the 'Aryan' side. In August 1945 Abraham learned that she was serving as a doctor in the Red Army hospital at Bydgoszcz. In June 1946 they immigrated from Poland with the idea of going to Israel. While temporarily delayed in Paris they received migration documents from friends in Australia. Dr Wajnryb and his wife studied for and received Australian medical degrees and established a joint general practice.