A blush box that saved from death from the Ravensbrück women's camp - 1943

A blush box that saved from death from the Ravensbrück women's camp - 1943

A celluloid blush box with a blush strip in it, used by two sisters in the Ravensbrück women's camp in Germany, before each order, and during selection in the camp to paint their cheeks, in order to look healthy and strong for work - an action that saved them from death during a period of over a year in the camp from July 1943 to September 1944. Ravensbrück . extremely rare.

It is a well-known fact that the Jews in the death camps (and even in the ghettos) used rouge as a blush for their cheeks to look healthier and fit for work, lest they be sent to death by the Nazis during the order or selection held almost every day. (Men also hid their weakness by painting their cheeks). Before us is a blush box used by two sisters in the Ravensbrück  women's camp to paint their cheeks - act that actually saved their lives. The box was hidden in a hiding place near the camp kitchen and it was disguised as a matchbox. Matches are placed inside the box, and in the upper part the blush strip. The blush, of course, has hardened over the years, but even today can be seen the blush streak. We received the box from the Daughter of one of the sisters to the Arkin family. The two sisters survived the holocaust, immigrated to Eretz Israel after the war and lived over the years in Ness Ziona.

At the Yad Vashem Museum, several testimonies were received about the Jews' use of blush in order to appear strong, an action that saved their lives. For example: "When there was an action or when they dressed me as an older woman and gave me high shoes, they put a little blush on my cheeks, so that I would look good, and that they would not execute me" (from the testimony of Panina Sandomirsky at Yad Vashem). And in the testimony given at Yad Vashem, Miriam Nik, a survivor of the Auschwitz camp, said: "In Plashov, we found used lipstick, finished, but it always remained at the bottom, so we scraped it off. There was no nylon, but we took a piece of celluloid and applied what was left to it and peeled it off. Every time we moved from camp to camp, Seven camps in total - at every threat of selection or in actual selection... we took a little bit of the little celluloid, and very gently applied it to the cheeks. We put very few so they wouldn't think we had a fever, if it was too red...".

In another testimony given in Yad Vashem by Nechama Gal from her mother who was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau: "Once, when my mother Sara passed by a pile of objects (of Jews sent to the crematorium) in the yard, she stepped on it suddenly, at the risk of her life, and her eyes caught a small pray book, and of all the treasures that were There she chose a siddur, snatched it and ran away quickly... due to too much use, the siddur disintegrated, on its inner cover a priceless treasure was discovered - a red substance, which immediately used to bring a blush to her pale cheeks in the morning before the order, and thus she looked healthy and fit for work."

Box: 6.5x4.5 cm. Good condition.