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Pendant at Sobibor may have belonged to Anne Frank relative

(JTA) – Yad Vashem and the Israel Antiquities Authority believe they have identified the owner of a pendant found at the Sobibor Nazi death camp in Poland. The pendant was dropped on the “Pathway to Heaven,” the path along which Jewish victims were forced to walk to the gas chambers. The pendant and personal items belonging to other inmates probably fell through the floorboards of the path and remained buried in the ground until they were discovered this past fall by Polish archaeologist Wojciech Mazurek and Yoram Haimi, an archaeologist from the Israel Antiquities Authority and their Dutch associate, archaeologist Ivar Schute. The unique pendant bears the words “Mazal Tov” written in Hebrew on one side and on the other side the Hebrew letter “hay” for God’s name as well three Stars of David. The inscription on the pendant indicates that it probably belonged to a child from Frankfurt who was born on July 3, 1929. Researchers searched the Yad Vashem database and discovered a girl named Karoline Cohn who fits the description. Cohn was deported from Frankfurt to Minsk on Nov. 11, 1941. While it is not known if Cohn survived the ghetto, her pendant reached Sobibor sometime between November 1941 and September 1943, when the ghetto was liquidated and the 2,000 Jewish prisoners interned there were deported to the death camp.

The pendant bears close resemblance to one owned by Holocaust diarist Anne Frank. Research reveals that both Frank and Cohn were born in Frankfurt, suggesting a possible familial connection between them. Researchers are currently trying to locate relatives of the two families.

“This pendant demonstrates once again the importance of archaeological research of former Nazi death camp sites. The moving story of Karoline Cohn is symbolic of the shared fate of the Jews murdered in the camp. It is important to tell the story, so that we never forget,” said Haimi.

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