On Tuesday the museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau announced in a statement that its staff had found a mug with a double bottom; in it, they said, was “a women’s ring made of gold and a necklace wrapped in a piece of canvas”.
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Over the years, time has taken its toll on the mug, which has led to the fake bottom coming free, revealing that inside the secret compartment was a gold ring and necklace, hidden away in hopes of one day being worn again by their owner.
Thought to have been made in Poland between 1921 and 1931, the items were found by staff during routine cleaning of the museum’s enamelled kitchenware exhibits.
The discovery, reported by AFP, came as the material at the bottom of the mug degraded and separated.
‘When I picked up this mug, it turned out that there were hidden objects inside, ‘ museum staffer Hanna Kubik said.
A false bottom concealed a gold necklace and a gold ring inlaid with stones.
Unveiling the find today, they said the mug was one of thousands of kitchenware items seized from those deported to the camp in southern Poland during World War II.
The refugee camp Auschwitz operated between 1940 and 1945 and saw the deaths of more than a million Jewish people.
Many hid valuables inside, items the museum says are still being discovered years later.
Many people who were sent to Auschwitz hid valuables inside everyday items as they feared that their possessions would be stolen from them. It is the head of a knight with the number three on the right side.
Considering it has been 71 years since the concentration camp was liberated by the Soviet Army, the jewellery could have been remained hidden for much longer.
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The hiding of valuable objects is repeatedly mentioned in the accounts of survivors of the camps, said museum director Dr Piotr Cywinski. However, their owners often remain anonymous because of the lack of traces on the objects to identify them. The mug, one of 12,000 pieces of kitchenware in the museum’s collection at the former extermination camp, had begun to fall apart with age and employees discovered its secret during maintenance work, the BBC reports.
