Necklace

Held by

Montreal Holocaust Museum via Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (incl. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives)

Dates

[ca. 1930] (indexed as 1930)

Level

item

Extent

Necklace : carved ; Ht: 0,5 cm x W: 5 cm x De: 32 cm

Scope & content

The pendant features carved elements of leaves, branches and haptic flowers in a circular piece of bone. It is attached by a black cord, decorated with beads, to an oblong clasp. In March 1945, a Soviet soldier gave this necklace to Sonia when he liberated her near Pomerania. The soldier told Sonia that she would one day wear jewelry again and gave her the necklace. Narrative: Sonia Smolnik-Aronowicz-Tencer was born in 1915, in Vilnius, formerly part of Poland. Her family has lived in Vilnius for many generations. She was married to a lawyer named Misha Aronowicz and studied to become an accountant. The city was under the Soviet occupation when the Nazis invaded on June 22, 1941. In September 1941, Sonia and her family were deported to the Vilnius ghetto, created by the Nazis to dehumanize and exploit the Jews. They remained there until 1943, when the men and women were separated. It was the last time she saw her brother, Ariye, and her husband, Misha. In the ghetto of Vilnius, Sonia befriended Miriam and Minya (Miriam's sister-in-law). Together, they made a pact to help each other survive the war. Their friendship and alliance represent a form of resistance against the abuse they suffered in the ghetto and labor camps. The same year, Sonia's parents went into hiding. Sonia and her two friends were then deported to the concentration camps of Riga-Kaiserwald and Riga-Strasdenhof in Latvia where they were used as forced labor. In 1945, they were deported to Bromberg-Ost, a women's annex of the Stutthof concentration camp where they were forced to build German railroads and barracks. The camp was liquidated on January 20, 1945, 300 survivors set off on a death march to Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg. Sonia managed to escape. She spent the next few weeks hiding in abandoned German houses before her liberation by the Soviet Army. On the day of her liberation near Pomerania, a Soviet soldier gave Sonia a necklace as a symbol of hope and comfort. He told her she would be able to wear jewelry again one day. After the war, Sonia reunited with her two friends. Miriam then immigrated to Boston where she became an administrative assistant in the Chemistry Department at Harvard. Minya remained in France, where she married and had two sons. Sonia arrived in Canada aboard the ship Samaria in 1950.

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Genre / form

object

In the picture

FlowerInterior ViewLeafStill LifeTagged automatically by a vision model; may contain mistakes.

Harvested

2026-10-17T20:12:41Z · source datestamp n/a · cjhn

Digital objects at the source

• imageOpen original at source ↗2020X_10_07.jpg