Dragica Vajnberger was born in Zagreb in 1919 into a Jewish family of artisans. Daughter of Ervin and Margita, her family name was Schlesinger. She graduated from the First Women's Gymnasium in Zagreb in 1937. During her high school years, she joined SKOJ (League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia). After the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, because of the danger of the persecutions that Jews were then subjected to, she moved to Split, at the time under Italian occupation, and then to Novi Vinodolski. In November 1942, she was taken to the Kraljevica concentration camp, and shortly afterward to the Italian fascist camp Kampor, on the island of Rab. After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, the camp was shut down and Dragica Vajnberger joined the Partisans. According to information she later received, her parents were taken to a camp in 1944 and all trace was lost of them. Except for one cousin who also joined the Partisans, none of her close family survived the war. After the war, she attended the Journalism and Diplomatic College in Belgrade (1948-1954) and until the end of 1954 worked as a secretary for Milovan Đilas. She worked in the state news agency „Tanjug” until 1965, then as an expert associate at the Institute for the Workers' Movement in Belgrade until 1967, and as the head of documentation at the Central Committee of Yugoslavia until 1973. After retiring, in 1973, she returned to Zagreb, where she lived at the “Lavoslav Schwarz” retirement home. She was one of the initial contributors to the Jewish Biographical Lexicon; using the Jewish Review and other sources, she created a basic database of approximately 1,000 entries. She died in Zagreb on the 2nd of May 2013.