The pouch was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2016.
Red cloth pouch with a metal zipper and leather strap. Embroidered on the top left corner are the initials ER inside a heart .
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overall: Height: 4.125 inches (10.478 cm) | Width: 6.125 inches (15.558 cm)
Red pouch embroidered with her initials ER used by Elsie Ragusin to carry her prayer book (2016.468.4). She acquired the book, Massime Eterne, in exchange for her food rations while she was a prisoner in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Elsie was born in New York to a couple who had immigrated years earlier to America from Italy. In 1939, the Ragusin family went to Italy on an extended visit. Elsie and her father were arrested as political spies. Elsie was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. She was liberated in 1945, and taken to Sweden to recover. She returned to the US in December 1945, and was reunited with her brothers.
Monogrammed red pouch used by an American concentration camp inmate