Extended Profile

Klara Kojfman Mafeld, the daughter of Miriam Galperson Kojfman (1887-1938) and Jakob Kojfman (1873-1921) was born in 1905. She married Mieczyslaw Mafeld, an attorney, in December 1937. Klara Mafeld worked as a secretary in the JDC Warsaw office for more than twenty years. She began her service at the JDC in the 1920s and continued her work even during World War II in the Warsaw Ghetto. Klara Mafeld’s husband survived the war with the Polish army in Romania and in Palestine. He practiced law in Warsaw immediately after the war, then moved to London where he became a consultant in international law. Mieczyslaw Mafeld returned to Warsaw after the war to search for his wife. He heard from acquaintances, former residents of the Warsaw Ghetto, that she had been deported during the war. In a letter to the JDC dated August 26, 1952, he wrote, “My wife was killed by the Germans in 1943 at so called ‘Vernichtungslager’ (death camp) at Treblinka.”

Klara Mafeld was survived by her husband, her brother Jozef Kojfman (Kofman) (1908-1995), and her nephew, Professor W. Kofman of Grenoble, France. According to Professor Kofman, Klara Mafeld was murdered in 1942.

Photograph courtesy of the family.