Dark brown leather satchel used by a Polish Jewish refugee

Herszl Rabinowicz, born on September 17, 1904, emigrated from Warsaw, Poland, to the United States in August 1938. He eventually settled in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife and daughter and changed his name to Harry Ray. His brother, Pinchas Rabinowicz, remained in Poland with his family, where he was the cantor in Miedzyrzec Podlaski. In September 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, Pinchas and his family fled to Soviet occupied eastern Poland. In the early 1940, the Soviets demanded that refugees choose to become Soviet citizens, return to German occupied Poland, or do nothing. Pinchas and his extended family chose to do nothing and were sent to labor camps near Komi. At the end of July 1941, nearly a month after Germany’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union, the Russians declared a general amnesty and released Polish citizens from the camps. The Rabinowicz family went south to Uzbekistan. When the war ended in 1945, they relocated to the Hasenecke displaced persons camp near Kassel, Germany. In June 1949, due to the efforts of Pinchas’s brother, Herszl, in Chicago, they were able to emigrate to the United States. Harry passed away, age 76, in 1980.

The briefcase was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by Terri Lynch, the daughter of Harry Ray.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Terri Lynch