NEW YORK (AP) — The blue and gray stripes struck Jillian Eisman like a lightning bolt.
She
was rummaging through a packed closet during a Long Island tag sale
when she immediately recognized the symbol of horror and hate: a jacket
worn by a prisoner at the Nazi Dachau concentration camp during World
War II.
"I
knew exactly what it was, even before I saw the numbers (84679 on the
chest)," said Eisman, who purchased the jacket for $2 at the sale last
year and donated it to the Kupferberg Holocaust Center in New York City.
Curators
there not only put the jacket on display, but also unearthed the story
of the person who wore it: a teenager forced to make munitions for the
German war effort, spent four years in a relocation camp and then came
to America, never telling his children much about Dachau or that he kept
the jacket.
The
story of Benzion Peresecki — who later became Ben Peres — is told in
extraordinary detail, thanks largely to the serial number and careful
records that he kept and that his daughter found long after he died.
"It
was known to us that my father and grandmother had both been in the
Holocaust," said Lorrie Zullo, who was 13 when her father died of a
stroke in 1978. "We knew he had a brother who had been killed. But he
did not talk about it much."
Her
brother, Michael Peres, who was 15 when their father died, said: "He
wanted to protect us as kids. He saw people die every day."
Holocaust
historians say jackets such as the one saved by Peres are fairly rare,
since most of the clothing worn by concentration camp prisoners was
burned because of lice and other potential diseases. Also, most freed
prisoners didn't want to keep reminders of their horrifying ordeal.
Cary
Lane, curator of the exhibit, said Peresecki was spared when Nazis
invaded his Lithuanian homeland because he was 15; all Jews 16 and
older, including his father and 17-year-old brother were executed. The
stocky, 5-foot-4 teenager was put to work making munitions, and years
later wrote about beatings he suffered as a prisoner.
"When
Ben was liberated, I think there was a conscious effort on his part to
document and hold onto things, which not only proved his suffering, but
also symbolically for himself, were evidence of his own survival," Lane
said.
Peres
spent four years in a "displaced persons" camp, where he was reunited
with his mother and earned a high school equivalency diploma. Eventually
making his way to the United States, he lived in several New York City
locations with his mother and his wife. He received a degree from Cooper
Union in Manhattan and worked as a mechanical engineer.
He
raised his family on Long Island and frequently took them on vacations;
most photos of him taken in those years show him with a broad, happy
smile.
"He was affectionate, loving," his daughter said. "He was kind of the glue of the family."
Zullo
said she was "flabbergasted" when she heard that the jacket had been
found hidden in a closet in the house where she was raised. "I didn't
even look through it before the sale," she said.
"What
are the odds of someone finding it and recognizing it for what it is
and then actually donating it to where it should have gone?"
Eisman,
whose 24-year-old brother, Joshua Birnbaum, was killed in the Sept. 11
attacks, said she feels "everything happens for a reason."
"There
is a reason why I was supposed to be in that house. ... There is a
reason why I was friends with someone who worked at a Holocaust museum.
What are the chances of that? It is difficult to say everything is a
coincidence."
https://www.yahoo.com/style/holocaust-jacket-prisoners-story-found-tag-sale-053304233.html
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