Regina Eber photographs

Multi-colored crocheted sweater received in a forced labor camp

Object

Sweater jacket worn by 23 year old Regina Wygodska from 1944 to 1945 in Ludwigsdorf concentration camp in Poland. The sweater was given to her by Master Didtrich, the man she worked for doing electrical repair. Much of her work was outside in the brutal cold, so he requested warm clothing for Regina. The sweater was obtained from the warehouse of clothing confiscated from prison inmates. Regina was wearing the sweater on May 5, 1945, when the camp was liberated by Soviet forces. Not long after liberation, she met Rubin Eber and they decided to marry. Regina wore the sweater for the ceremony on November 20, 1945. When they arrived, and Mrs. Davidovicz, the wife of the man performing the ceremony, saw Regina, she turned white and began to cry. She told Regina that this was "the sweater that my mother made in the Lodz ghetto from small remnants of wool left over from many other sweaters" and that her mother had been murdered at Auschwitz. Regina took off the sweater and tried to give it to her, but Mrs. Davidovicz refused to take it. Regina preserved the sweater as a sacred object and never wore it again. Regina and her family were confined to the Warsaw ghetto not long after the German occupation of September 1939. Regina and her sister, Irene, escaped before the ghetto was destroyed following the Ghetto Uprising in spring 1943. They assumed false identities, but were deported by the Germans that summer. Irene was sent to Auschwitz and gassed upon arrival. Regina was sent to Ginterbrucker, then Ludwigsdorf concentration/labor camp where she was liberated. All of her family was killed during the Holocaust.