Among the items exhibited at Turkey’s Anatolian Toy Museum is a 78-year-old doll made with the hair of an unidentified Jewish girl who perished in Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
By World Israel News Staff
While the Anatolian Toy Museum boasts over 13,000 toys and other items, a small baby doll dating back more than seven decades is earning the small museum in Turkey international attention due to its connection to the Nazis’ horrific war crimes in World War II.
The doll in question recently came to the attention of Turkish news agency DHA, which quoted museum director Emrah Ünlüsoy explaining the artifact’s “touching story.”
According to Mr. Ünlüsoy, “Before being killed [by the Nazis], girls’ hair was cut and used on the dolls produced for German children,” including the doll in his museum’s collection.
Jewish visitors have been moved to tears by the sight of the doll, according to DHA. Officials of a Jewish “civil society organization” reportedly were granted permission in November 2017 to take a sample of hair for DNA testing with which it hoped to locate members of the victim’s family.
At press time, the doll, which was reportedly purchased from a German curator, remained in a glass display case in the Turkish museum.
News of the doll surfaced this year in the run-up to Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, on which the nation mourns the loss of 6 million Jews who perished in Europe during the Nazis’ brutal reign.
At Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust, Jewish men, women, and children were stripped of valuables and had their heads shaved before they were sent to their deaths.
At the site of camps such as Auschwitz, artifacts, including human hair, remain on display to this day as a chilling reminder of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s “final solution” to exterminate the Jews.