Like many people, Judy Gartner wears a gold band on the ring finger of her left hand. But her ring is special for another reason – the inside of the band is inscribed with the year 1873.

The journey of this little gold band started in Germany, as the ring on Gartner’s great-grandmother’s hand. The ring found its way to the United States sewn securely into the pocket of a pair of trousers, packed in the trunk of a Jewish couple who would never make it to the United States – Gartner’s great aunt and uncle, who were murdered in the Holocaust.

“I’ve decided to wear this again to have a link to my past,” Gartner said.

The ring isn’t the only artifact Gartner has managed to preserve. She also has a magazine article from Germany that tells the story of her grandparents’ wedding, a detailed family tree from her mother’s side, a book with her father’s family history, a kiddush cup, letters, documents and even her father’s skiing supplies.

Gartner has donated some things to the Holocaust Museum but is still navigating what to do with the rest of her collection. She said she hopes that her children continue to preserve the items and the stories they carry.

Emily Goodman, Baltimore Jewish Council director of Holocaust and countering antisemitism programs, spoke to the relevance of heirlooms like these in keeping stories alive.

“We have a Holocaust Survivors Speakers Bureau, which is not largely comprised of children and grandchildren of survivors,” Goodman said.

In January 2024, a demographic report conducted by the Claims Conference found that 245,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors were alive globally. Close to half of those survivors live in Israel and 95% of the survivors alive today are child survivors born between 1928 and 1946.

The speakers in the Survivors Speakers Bureau tell the stories of their parents and grandparents to educate students and community groups. According to Goodman, many of these speakers rely in part on physical items to make connections.

One second generation survivor, Nancy Kutler, said “There’s nothing as powerful as actually having things to show.”

Kutler, who typically visits six to eight schools each year, shows students a presentation with audio of her mother telling her story, documents and photos.

One of the photos depicts her mother, Hannah Rath’s, uniform from the concentration camp. According to Kutler, the uniform was cut from a larger uniform and was altered by her seamstress mother to fit better.

“Even in her darkest days as a prisoner in a concentration camp, she cared about what she looked like to the point that she actually tapered her uniform,” Kutler said. “It really gives you a sense of the person.”

Kutler’s presentation also features photos of her mother wearing her iconic red lipstick.
“The first bit of money she got in the transport to the United States and what did she spend it on instead of food or whatever? She spent it on buying lipstick,” Kutler said.

To Kutler, her mother’s story and the artifacts that help tell it paint a clear picture of the importance of personal dignity and the efforts survivors went through to preserve and rebuild that.

“This is my legacy and it’s my responsibility, if I don’t continue to tell this story, it will be lost,” Kutler said. “There are just so many lessons to be learned from this story about being an upstander, not a bystander, and what can happen if hate goes unchecked.”

The artifacts function as a physical bridge to the past, reflecting the time they were from, their use and the significance an item held.

“I have the last letter that my father wrote to his parents with a response from a man saying ‘I’m sorry to tell you but your parents were taken to an old age home.’ In reality, that was Terezin Concentration Camp,” Gartner said.

This letter and others with it reflect the uncertainty of the time and the frantic efforts to learn the whereabouts of family members.

Alongside the letter, Gartner also keeps a poem her father wrote on the ship journey to the U.S. The poem, written in December 1937, tells an emotional story of horror at what had become of Germany.

“What is happening to you? You, land of spirit, of culture, land of art and science, why are you being punished so severely? How is it possible? I cannot believe it, but I have to leave you, my fatherland. You were beautiful, farewell,” Gartner said, reading the English translation of her father Karl Weiler’s poem.

In May, Gartner and her husband, Randy Gartner, attended a sidewalk ceremony on Lynarstrasse for the laying of stumbling stones — memorial blocks which have been laid across Europe and Russia.

While some people like Gartner and Kutler are fortunate enough to have artifacts to tell their family stories, not all future generations may be so fortunate. Kutler encourages the students she visits to start making a conscious effort to preserve their family histories now.

“Ask your grandparents, tape them — do it on your phone,” Kutler said.