Nina Kaleska collection

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• irn39862
• English
• overall: Height: 1.625 inches (4.128 cm) | Width: 0.750 inches (1.905 cm) | Depth: 0.125 inches (0.318 cm)
• Updated 7 months ago

Embroidered cloth pin made for Nelly Kalecka's 16th birthday at the Rechlin slave labor camp in 1945. It was made for her by a friend in the camp who was a seamstress for the German officers. It is embroidered with the prisoner number assigned to Nelly in 1944 when she arrived in Rechlin. In 1941, Nelly, 12, with her parents and sister Sala, 17, was forced into the Jewish ghetto in Grodno in German occupied Poland. The girls evaded several evacuation transports, but on January 20, 1943, Nelly and Sala were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp where Nelly was tattooed with the number 313...

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• irn39863
• English
• 1946
• overall: Height: 16.375 inches (41.593 cm) | Width: 0.750 inches (1.905 cm)
• Updated 7 months ago

Religious medallion that was a parting gift to 17 year old Nina Kaleska when she left Prague for London in 1946. It was given to her by Vaclav Ruziczka, whom she met on a park bench soon after she arrived in the city where she had no contacts. He helped her find a place to live and to work. Nina had decided to go to Prague in June 1945, following her May 1945 liberation during the Retzow death march by the Russian Army. She had no surviving relatives in Europe and went to Prague to try to find a friend that she had made in the concentration camps. In 1941, when she was 12, Nina was forced i...

• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• irn39864
• English
• 1943-1945
• overall: Height: 1.375 inches (3.493 cm) | Width: 0.750 inches (1.905 cm)
• Updated 7 months ago

Religious medallion with an image of Moses with the Ten Commandments found by Nina Kaleska on a concentration camp transport around 1944. It also has the beginning lines in Hebrew of the S’hma prayer, a foundational prayer of Judaism, recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4. In 1941, when she was 12, Nina was forced into the Jewish ghetto in Grodno, Poland, with her parents and older sister, Sala, who was 17. The girls evaded several evacuation transports from the ghetto, but on January 20, 1943, Nina and Sala were deported to Auschwitz. Her sister fell ill and died within a few months. Nina was in the...