Small leather wallet with buckle used by a teenage girl to hold her diary in a labor camp

Julia Rabinowicz was born June 4, 1927, in Łódź, Poland, to Becalel and Salomea Goldkirch Rabinowicz. Salomea, born on January 13, 1890, was a pharmacist. Julia had one older sister, Krystyna, born in 1922. In September 1939, the Germans invaded Poland and occupied Łódź. They established a Jewish ghetto In February 1940,where Julia and her mother were relocated and lived with Maria Rabinowicz, possibly a cousin. In August 1944, Julia and Salomea were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Julia was transferred to the Kratzau labor camp in Czechoslovakia. It is likely she was put to work in the ammunition factory; children were often used there because they needed small hands to assemble the grenades. The camp was liberated on May 9, 1945, by Russian forces. From Kratzau, Julia returned to Łódź and lived in the Helenowek children’s home operated by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. She stayed at Helenowek until 1949. Both her parents were killed but her sister survived. Salomea had been transferred from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Stutthof concentration camp in Poland on September 27, 1944. She was assigned prisoner number 88171 and died there on December 30, 1944. Julia married Chaim Piotr Gorodecki. He had lived in the Warsaw ghetto until its destruction in summer 1943. He then went into hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw, and fought in the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. They had one daughter. The family lived in Warsaw until 1968, when the antisemitic policies of the Polish government prompted them to emigrate to Israel.

The wallet was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by Olga Lax, the daughter of Julia Rabinowicz.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Olga Lax