Overview
- Brief Narrative
- Armband worn by Annie Rose Levine while she was imprisoned in Auschwitz concentration camp. In June 1942, Annie, her husband, Benjamin, and their 4 children were deported by the Germans from Sered, Czechoslovakia, (Slovakia) to Auschwitz. In September, Benjamin was beaten to death by camp guards for saying the Kaddish over a dead bunk mate. In 1943, Annie began working as a nurse in the camp hospital. An SS section leader made her his private nurse. One day, he asked her to get a paper from a box beneath his bed. Also in the box was her husband’s wedding ring. That day, Annie secretly stitched the Star of David and her initials inside the armband, in memory of her husband, who would always be her shining star. Annie and one daughter, Evey, were the only family members who survived.
- Date
-
use:
1942-1945
- Geography
-
use:
Auschwitz (Concentration camp);
Oświęcim (Poland)
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Nightingale Intitiative for Global Health
- Markings
- bottom center hem, stamped in black ink : M
- Contributor
-
Subject:
Annie R. Levine
- Biography
-
Annie Rose and Benjamin Levine and their four children, 2 boys and 2 girls, were inhabitants of Sered, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia). Benjamin was a cantor for the synagogue. Annie worked as a nurse in a clinic that operated out of the basement of the synagogue. Although most of the people they treated were Jewish, the clinic offered health care to all who needed it. This region became very dependent on Nazi Germany after Czechoslovakia was broken apart by the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. In March 1942, Slovakia signed an agreement giving the Germans the authority to deport Slovak Jews. Labor and concentration camps were established in several Slovak cities, including Sered.
In June 1942, the family was deported to Auschwitz concentration camp. Anne and the girls were placed in block 10; Benjamin and the boys were in block 11. Annie occasionally saw her husband through the wire fence that separated the blocks. That September, Benjamin was caught reading the Kaddish over the beaten body of one of his bunk mates. He was tortured, his gold teeth were pulled out, and then he was beaten to death. The next day, their sons, along with other young boys, were told they were being sent to a factory to work; instead, they were sent to the gas chambers.
In the spring of 1943, the German guards brought Jewish doctors out of the camps and put them to work in the camp hospitals, alongside their Polish and German colleagues. One of the doctors, Dr. Daniel (Weis?) remembered Annie from the clinic in Sered and asked that she be permitted to help. She began working in the hospital and a few months later, a German SS Rottenfuhrer [Section Leader], Herr Dobrow, made her his private nurse. He had been infected with typhus and required around the clock nursing. Annie was tattoed on the upper right back, instead of the wrists, in order to keep some of the SS men from realizing that they were being nursed by a Jew. Annie was separated from her daughters, Evey and Ruthie, and made to live in the office quarters. On her eighth day there, Herr Dobrow asked her to retrieve a paper from a small box under his bed. In that box, she found her husband’s wedding ring. In his memory, she stitched a Star of David and her initials inside her medical armband. Annie’s daughter, Ruthie, died of starvation in the camp in 1943, a few months after being separated from her mother. Annie and her daughter, Evey, survived Auschwitz and eventually emigrated to the United States.
Physical Details
- Classification
-
Identifying Artifacts
- Category
-
Armbands
- Object Type
-
Armbands (lcsh)
- Physical Description
- Rectangular white cloth armband with hemmed edges folded in half to create 2 layers. A red cloth cross is stitched on the front center. On the other side, inside the armband, is an outline of a stitched cross, a Star of David and initials embroidered in blue thread. A letter is stamped in black ink at the bottom center. There is a rectangular cut-out along the right lower hem, with remnants of a printed letter in the lower right corner.
- Dimensions
- overall: Height: 4.000 inches (10.16 cm) | Width: 17.875 inches (45.403 cm)
- Materials
- overall : cloth, thread, ink
- Inscription
- inside armband, stitched, blue thread : ARL
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- No restrictions on access
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The armband was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2008 by Barbara Dossey on behalf of the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health, which had received it as a donation in 2000 from the family of Annie Rose Levine.
- Record last modified:
- 2022-07-28 21:51:05
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn35336
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