Researchers conducting an archaeological excavation at the Sobibor extermination camp in eastern Poland, one of the most notorious Nazi death camps, have uncovered a pendant that appears identical to one belonging to teenage diarist Anne Frank, Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum said Sunday.
Archaeologists found the pendant under the remains of a hut where the hair of Jewish women was cut off before they were sent to the gas chambers. There, beneath the floorboards, they also found hairpins and other jewelry that had apparently fallen off more than 70 years ago.
The pendant, along with other pieces of jewelry and additional items belonging to Holocaust victims, was found in October during an archaeological dig by Yoram Haimi of the Israel Antiquities Authority and his colleagues, Polish archaeologist Wojciech Mazurek and Dutch archaeologist Ivar Schute.
The excavation was directed by Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research and is being funded by the Sobibor Steering Committee.
Yad Vashem says it has confirmed that the pendant belonged to a Jewish girl named Karoline Cohn, who perished in Sobibor and may have been connected to Frank. Both girls were born in Frankfurt in 1929, and historians have found no other pendants like theirs.
The triangular piece has the words “Mazal tov” written in Hebrew on one side, along with Cohn’s date of birth. The other side has the Hebrew letter hei, used to symbolize God’s name, as well as three Stars of David. Researchers are now trying to reach out to any remaining relatives to confirm if Cohn and Frank were related.
Since 2007, the Israel Antiquities Authority, together with Yad Vashem, has been conducting excavations at the former death camp, which was destroyed and leveled after a prisoner revolt in October 1943. The Nazis planted pine trees over the site to cover up their crimes. In recent years, archaeologists have managed to uncover the gas chamber foundations and the original train platform.
More than 250,000 Jews were murdered at Sobibor, one of the most extreme examples of the Nazi Final Solution to eradicate European Jewry. Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen camp, in northern Germany, in 1945.
Unlike other Nazi facilities that purported to be prison or labor camps, Sobibor and several other camps, including nearby Belzec and Treblinka, were designed specifically for exterminating Jews. Victims were transported there in cattle cars and gassed to death almost immediately.
“These recent findings from the excavations at Sobibor constitute an important contribution to the documentation and commemoration of the Holocaust, and help us to better understand what happened at Sobibor, both in terms of the camp’s function and also from the point of view of the victims,” said Havi Dreifuss, of Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research.
“The importance of the research conducted in Sobibor is reinforced every excavation season. Whenever we come here, we expose another part of the camp, find additional personal items, and expand our knowledge. Despite the efforts by Nazis and their supporters to cover things up, we are succeeding in preserving the memory of the murdered victims,” Haimi said.
By Yori Yalon and Israel Hayom Staff
