Auschwitz survivor donates inmates’ jewelry

JERUSALEM —  A 95-year-old Auschwitz survivor donated jewelry he took from the clothing of Jews who were gassed to death at the Nazi camp to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum on Monday.

Polish-born Meyer Hack, who now lives in Boston, found the gems while sorting the clothing of victims sent to die in the gas chambers, which was his job at the camp where his mother, brother and two sisters died.

He hid the eight rings, watches and brooches of diamonds and gold beneath his barracks.

Hack said he took the jewelry with him stuffed in a sock on a winter’s “death march” from the camp in Poland to the Dachau camp, near Munich, in Germany, in January 1945. He escaped Dachau and hid until World War II ended.

Hack, among hundreds of Jews deported from his hometown of Ciechanow, broke down as he spoke about how he had to sort and bundle the clothes of victims forced to disrobe before they were gassed.