us-005578-irn522911-irn522913
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn522911-irn522913/acquisitions/1
record resource extent: overall: Height: 8.625 inches (21.908 cm) | Width: 1.375 inches (3.493 cm) | Depth: 0.125 inches (0.318 cm)
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn522911-irn522913/alternateIDs/1
identifier: irn522913
date: 1941 September-1943 September
scope and content: Wrist watch with a brown band owned by Tema Ginzburg that originally belonged to her uncle, Benjamin Ginzburg. Before the family was imprisoned in the Jewish ghetto in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania, he altered it from a pocket watch to a wrist watch to make it easier to keep in the ghetto. During the liquidation of one of two ghettos in October 1941, Benjamin was deported to Estonia, then Stutthof concentration camp, where he was killed. He gave the watch to his brother, Moise, Tema's father, before leaving. Moise wore the watch for a while; he was deported to Chelmno concentration camp and killed in 1943. At some point, the watch was given to Tema. The Ginzburg family were prosperous merchants in Vilna, Lithuania, who experienced increasingly severe persecution as Jews through the Soviet annexation in 1940 and the German occupation in the summer of 1941. Over 7000 Jews were massacred by the Germans and the Lithuanians in the Ponary forest near Vilna that summer, including Tema's grandmother and uncle. In 1943, the Germans liquidated the Vilna ghettos. Tema's mother and father were deported and killed. Nineteen year old Tema escaped and was sheltered throughout the war by a friend of her mother's, a Polish woman, Josefa Mackiewicz. In 1953, she learned by chance that her twin sister had survived the Holocaust and was living in the United States.
title: Wrist watch with a brown band and engraved initials saved from Vilna ghetto
physical characterisitics and technical requirements: Rectangular, silver colored metal watch with bulbous sides and a rectangular bar attached to the top and bottom. It has a white circular face with a glass cover, blue hands, and black Arabic numerals, except for a red 12. Near the 6 is a circle with a counter for seconds. A narrow, brown, leather band is attached with thread to the metal pins at the top and bottom of the body. There is a gold colored metal buckle at one end and a turn screw on the right side. There are initials engraved on the back.
has or had some members with language: fra
has or had holder: us-005578
is or was included in: us-005578-irn522911
has record set type: Item
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
history: Tema Ginzburg was born on November 6, 1925, to Moise and Rachel Rubenstein Ginzburg in Vilna, Poland (Vilnius, Lithuania). Moise, born in 1899, was a coal and lumber merchant and Rachel, born in Russia, was a teacher. Tema had an older brother, Benjamin, and a twin sister, Eta. Although the family was not religiously observant, the children attended the Jewish school in Vilna where they learned Yiddish. Moise bartered fuel to pay for their tuition. Antisemitism had long been a dominant force in Lithuania; pogroms occurred regularly. In the late 1930s, Jews were no longer allowed to operate certain businesses, and Moise’s business suffered greatly. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania. As Tema remembers it, most of the antisemitism under Russian rule came from the Polish working class. Blue collar workers organized a number of pogroms, with the Poles yelling: “The Jews may have the houses, but the streets belong to us.” These antisemitic groups enforced boycotts of Jewish owned businesses, preventing other Poles from shopping there, which devastated the Jewish community. Most were merchants since they were barred from many other professions. Her father’s business began to fail and other family members had to help him financially. Her brother, Benjamin, was extremely gifted intellectually, and for this reason was the only Jew allowed to attend the non-Jewish gymnasium. Everything changed when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. Thousands of Jews fled Vilna for the Soviet Union, but most did not have time to escape before the Germans arrived. Almost immediately, the Germans began issuing anti-Jewish decrees. They staged an attack on their own soldiers and leaflets were distributed throughout Vilna that proclaimed the Jews had killed the Germans and had to be punished. German and Lithuanian killing squads began their work and by the end of August 1941, over 7,000 Jews, including Tema’s grandmother and uncle, had been shot in the Ponary forest near Viln…
history: The wrist watch was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by George de Ratafia, the son of Tema de Ratafia.
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
type: RecordSet