Blouse sewed for Janina Praetzel on her liberation from the Kratzau camp

Janina Praetzel was born in 1920 in Krakow, the only daughter of dentist Gustav Praetzel and his wife, Anna. Their family home was in the center of the city. When the Nazis took over Krakow, they confiscated the house and the family was moved into the ghetto.

In 1942, Gustav was beaten to death by Nazi soldiers in the ghetto and was buried in the Plaszow cemetery. In August 1944, Janina and her mother were deported to Auschwitz. An acquaintance from Krakow who had arrived at the camp before Anna and  Janina, and worked sorting the deportees clothes, gave Anna a coat and scarf.  About two months later, both mother and daughter were transferred to the Kratzau labor camp, a sub-camp of Gross-Rosen in the Sudeten mountains.

Anna perished in the camp in 1944, and Janina kept the coat and scarf. After the liberation a friend sewed a blouse for Janina from the scarf, the coat's lining and a blanket from the camp. Thus Anna's camp clothes became Janina's first clothes after liberation.
When Janina immigrated to Israel, she brought the blouse with her and added buttons to it.   

Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection
Courtesy of Janina Ferber, Tel Aviv, Israel