Rectangular, light brown paper, with creases from being folded in quadrants. Front has sketch in pencil of an older man in right profile, wearing glasses. He is rotund, has close cut hair, a protruding lower lip, a thick neck, and appears to be wearing a jacket and tie. Back is blank.
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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 drawing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by Olga Lax, the daughter of Julia Rabinowicz.
overall: Height: 5.500 inches (13.97 cm) | Width: 4.000 inches (10.16 cm)
Pencil sketch of a man owned by Julia Rabinowicz, possibly acquired while she was in the Helenowek children's home. In 1939, the Germans invaded and occupied Poland. The next year, Julia, her parents, Becalel and Solomea, and her sister, Krystyna, were interned in the Jewish ghetto in Łódź. In August 1944, when she was 17 years old, Julia and her mother were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. Julia was then transferred to the Kratzau labor camp in Czechoslovakia, where she was liberated on May 9, 1945. Her parents perished in the Holocaust. Her sister survived. Julia returned to Łódź after the war and, until 1949, lived in the Helenowek children’s home, operated by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Pencil sketch of an older man given to a Jewish refugee in a postwar orphanage