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Ania Kaplan's dress
There isn’t a single photograph of blue-eyed Ania Kaplan, the seven-year-old girl who was murdered in the Minsk ghetto. All that remains of her is a small brown dress.
Ania was born in 1934 in Minsk, a daughter to Gershon and Elka and a younger sister for Gita. Following the outbreak of the war, her father Gershon was conscripted to the Red Army and did not return. The letters that he wrote to his daughter were all they had to remember him by.
Even after the occupation of Minsk, Ania continued to attend kindergarten. One day an Aktion was carried out, and all the children were taken away and murdered. When Ania’s mother Elka learned what had happened, she took her elder daughter Gita and fled eastward until they reached the city of Kazan, Russia where Gita met Gershon Shteinwartzel. Gita and Gershon later married and had two children. Elka Kaplan kept her daughter Ania’s dress throughout the years.
Gita’s daughter, Chana Schwartz, donated the dress to Yad Vashem for posterity.