Pocket knife used by a Polish Jewish female slave laborer

Yona Wygocka was born on March 15, 1928, in Pabianice, Poland, to Natan and Rifka Wygocka. She was the eldest of four children in a working class Jewish family. They were a closeknit extended family and many relatives lived nearby. Her father Natan sold goods to Polish shops, often on a barter system where he traded his merchandise for food. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Jewish section of Pabianice, where Yona's family lived, was made into a ghetto. Food was very scarce. The Germans made weekly searches where they seized valuables and other belongings from Jewish homes. Next, the Germans began seizing people for forced labor service. In May 1942, the ghetto was liquidated. Yona's mother, brother, and youngest sister were sent to Chelmno killing center and murdered. Yona, her father, and her sister Bluma, 10, were sent to Łódź Ghetto. Yona, then12, and her younger sister were made to work in a factory sewing clothes. There were frequent aktions when people were taken away and deported, and the girls would hide at those times. In August 1944, they were found and taken to Auschwitz concentration camp, along with their aunt Hela. Her sister was sent to the gas chambers and killed. Yona was transferred to work in an airplane factory in Germany. When the Allies began bombing the region, the camp was evacuated. The inmates were taken by train ot Mauthausen. Ten days later, on May 5, 1945, they were liberated by American troops of the 11th Armored Division. With the help of Jewish Brigade members, Yona and Hela got to Italy, where they prepared to emigrate to Palestine. After six moths, they left Italy by ship for Palestine, where they had three uncles, Chaim, Tal, and Avram. Yona settled in Tel Aviv where she met Isaac Dickmann, a fellow survivor from Poland. The couple married in 1948. They immigrated to the United States in 1959 and settled in Washington DC.

The knife was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1990 by Yona Wygocka Dickmann.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Yona Wygocka Dickmann

Funding Note: The cataloging of this artifact has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.