Anne Frank link possibly unearthed at Nazi death camp excavation
JERUSALEM -- Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial says researchers excavating the remains of one of the most notorious Nazi death camps have uncovered a pendant that appears identical to one belonging to Anne Frank.
Yad Vashem says Sunday it has ascertained the pendant belonged to Karoline Cohn - a Jewish girl who perished at Sobibor and may have known the famous diarist. Like Frank, Cohn was born in Frankfurt in 1929. Researchers are trying to confirm whether they were related.
One side of the pendant reads 3.7.29 -- Karoline Cohn’s date of birth -- and the word “Mazel tov.” The other side features a Hebrew letter for God’s name and three Stars of David.
The Israel Antiquities Authority has been conducting excavations at the former camp in Poland since 2007 and has already uncovered the gas chamber foundations and the original train platform.
More than 250,000 Jews were killed in Sobibor. The pendant was found along what is called the “Pathway to Heaven,” the area of the camp where Jews were forced to walk to the gas chamber, according to the Yad Vashem Museum’s website.