Tamara Podriadchik's lunch bag
In 1941, 14-year-old Tamara Podriadchik and her 11-year-old brother Yosef attended a summer camp in Palanga (a seaside resort town in western Lithuania, on the shore of the Baltic Sea). Tamara received instructions from her parents on how to take care of her brother. "Give him only one pair of pants, one shirt and a pair of socks," read one letter. "Keep the rest of his belongings with you." At another time, the parents scolded their children lightly: "You probably buy too many sweets if you already lack money," and in one letter they try to encourage their children who are far from home: "Many children in Kaunas are jealous of you, it's not a trivial matter – Palanga, sea, forest and other good things [...] Be healthy full of energy, cheerful, eat and drink, dance and jump, Father/Mother Leibusch and Genia."
While they were in the summer camp, the Germans invaded and chaos reigned in the area. Most of the children, including Tamara, were hastily sent back to their families in Kaunas.
Tamara's lunch bag and other belongings remained with Yosef, who, along with other children, fled with one of the guides toward Soviet-controlled territories. The members of the group managed to cross the border and thus survived the Holocaust.
About four months after Yosef's abrupt separation from his sister, Tamara and her parents were sent to the Ninth Fort, where they were murdered. Yosef kept his sister's belongings safe as a lasting memorial to his beloved sister and parents. He donated them to Yad Vashem in 2017. He passed away at the age of 90 in April 2021.
Bracelet of an Anonymous Girl
The second artifact is a bracelet that tells the story of an anonymous girl who was murdered, like Tamara, at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas.
The bracelet was donated to Yad Vashem by Arie Segalson (later a judge in Israel) who during the Holocaust was sent to forced labor at the Ninth Fort murder site, a job that included loading the victims' belongings onto trucks. One day, in a spot between the bushes, he came across the body of a murdered girl, lying on the ground next to her parents. On her arm was a bracelet; Segalson hurriedly removed it without thinking of the danger involved. He buried it in a hiding place and returned to pick it up later. He safeguarded the bracelet for many years.
"I view this bracelet as a silent monument to one-and-a-half million children murdered by the Germans," he said in his testimony.
"The bracelet of the anonymous girl bears her memory and that of all the other unknown Holocaust victims," says Michael Tal, Director of the Artifacts Department in the Museums Division. "Together with Tamara Podriadchik's lunch bag, these two artifacts bring the story of the millions of victims of the mass murder that eighty years ago began the systematic extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany."
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 95.
