After Nazi Germany attacked the USSR on June 22, 1941, a brutal new phase of World War II began, which had far-reaching consequences for millions of people. It was with the beginning of the German-Soviet war that Einsatz teams appeared in the occupied territories of the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine, which were engaged in shooting the Jewish population directly “on the spot”, in ravines and ravines. Mass executions became total in a few months. And since the end of 1941, the Nazis intensified the mass deportations of Jews from the occupied territories to death camps and concentration camps, where they were almost certain to die.
The Museum's exhibition contains physical evidence of the terrible events that took place in the concentration camps. This is the work of a doctor – a prisoner of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp (Poland), where more than 1.5 million Jews, Roma, Poles, and Soviet prisoners of war were exterminated. The uniform has the appearance of a dark green woolen jacket with golden buttons and 4 pockets.
The jacket has identification marks that allowed its owner to move freely around the camp. Yes, above the left upper pocket you can see a white patch with the prisoner's personal number. A red and yellow six-pointed star consisting of two triangles is sewn under the camp number (the red color meant that the person ended up in the camp for so-called “political” crimes; the yellow color indicated the nationality of the prisoner – a Jew). On his left sleeve, the prisoner wore a red armband with the inscription “ARZT” in German, which means doctor. And on the reverse side of the robe, in the center of the back, there was a white patch with a red cross and the letters ARZT near the base of the cross.
Roba was donated to the Museum by Leon and Lada Sherman, natives of Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), who emigrated to the USA in 1973. Unfortunately, the further fate of the doctor-prisoner from Auschwitz, as well as his name, remain unknown. As are the names of thousands and thousands of Jews who were exterminated in the Holocaust.