"This is an eternal souvenir," wrote 9-year-old Moishe to a caregiver Emilia in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto, just before they perished.
Children in the Auschwitz extermination camp
Photo:
GettyImages, Archive
"Relief and happiness for the new year ... an eternal souvenir of Mrs. Reinwald of Trashchensky Moishe (Moshe)" Shortly before he was murdered in Auschwitz.
Amelia was also murdered in the Holocaust, but this letter was kept for decades by her daughter and handed over to Yad Vashem for life.
The touching fee is part of a new online exhibition "on the occasion of Rosh Hashanah" displayed on the Yad Vashem website ahead of the Tishrei holidays.
For the holiday season, Yad Vashem offers, through testimonies, objects, photos, greeting cards and prayer books from Yad Vashem collections, a look at the ways in which Jews celebrated the holidays before, during and after the Holocaust.
These are decades-old items that have accompanied the Jews for a long time.
In August 1943, about 1,200 children from the Bialystok ghetto were sent to the Terezin ghetto, accompanied by several adults, including medical staff and therapists.
Two days later, on August 24, the train arrived at the Bohusovice station near Terezin.
At the station, the therapists who had arrived from Bialystok and were sent to Auschwitz were separated.
Most of them were murdered and the other children were transferred to the Terezin ghetto, among them were 9-year-old Moshe Trashchensky and his brother Yodel, who was one year older.
While in the carriages, the children were given food and disinfected.
New caregivers were appointed for the children, selected from the medical and treatment staff in the Terezin ghetto, when Moshe first met Emilia.
In the ghetto, the impression was created that the children and their caregivers would be sent to Switzerland or Israel.
For Rosh Hashanah, Moishe prepared a "Happy New Year" greeting to Emilia, who was a widow who volunteered to take care of the children who came from Bialystok.
Emilia managed to transfer the fee to her daughter, who was staying with relatives outside the ghetto because her father was not Jewish, through a Czech policeman who worked in the ghetto.
On October 5 of that year, 1,196 children and 53 of their caregivers were sent to Auschwitz and murdered upon arrival, including Moshe, his brother Yodel and Emilia.