Blue plaid handkerchief owned by a Polish Jewish refugee

Blue and offwhite handkerchief owned by Yuda (Ido) Kornmann, a Jewish man from Sokal, Poland, who survived the Holocaust with his wife Hela and young daughter Regina. Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Three weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded from the east. Sokal was in eastern Poland (later Ukraine) and was occupied by the Soviet Union. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the town was overrun by German troops on June 23. Most of Ido’s relatives and the Jewish population of Sokal were deported to Belzec killing center in 1942. After the war ended in May 1945, Ido, Hela, and Regina presumably lived as displaced persons in Germany near Foehrenwald. The family, now including two young sons, emigrated to the United States in 1950.