Rose Kaplovitz collection

Overview

Collection Summary

The Rose Kaplovitz collection consists of autograph books, correspondence, photographs and scrip documenting the lives of Rose and her family in Sosnowiec, Będzin, and Łazy. The collections relates to their experiences before the Holocaust, Rose’s survival in the Sosnowiec ghetto and Ober-Altstadt forced labor camp, and her postwar life in a Jewish orphanage in Chorzów and at the Leipheim displaced persons camp. The collection includes two autograph books kept by Rózia Zaks during and after the Holocaust. She used the first in the Sosnowiec ghetto from September 1941, at slave labor camp Ober-Alstadt in 1943, and through her liberation in 1945. The book includes written entries from her sisters and friends, and several pages include a “secret” folded corner. She used the second after liberation in May 1945, during her time at a Jewish orphanage in Chorzów and at the Leipheim displaced persons camp, and until her immigration to the United States in 1947. Correspondence primarily consists of wartime letters and postcards written by the Zaks family in the Sosnowiec ghetto and sent to Rose’s sisters Mania and Tola at the Welzel textile plant in Trautenau (Trutnov, part of the Parschnitz labor camp) and the Kluge textile plant (part of the Ober-Alstadt labor camp). This series also includes prewar letters belonging to Rose’s maternal relative Sam Kleinman. Photographs include pre-war photographs of Sosnowiec, Będzin, and Łazy Poland; wartime photographs of Sosnowiec; and post-war photographs of a children's home in Chorzów. The photographs depict Zaks family members and friends, many of whom perished during the Holocaust.

Provenance

Rose Kaplovitz donated the Rose Kaplovitz collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1996, 2004, and 2006, and Gerald Kaiser added an autograph book to the collection in 2014. Accessions formerly cataloged as 1996.A.0576, 2004.207, 2006.441.1, and 2014.137.1 have been incorporated into this collection.