Doll

Held by

Montreal Holocaust Museum via Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (incl. Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives)

Dates

1940-1943 (indexed as 1940–1943)

Level

item

Extent

Doll : Ht: 13 in. x W: 7 in.

Scope & content

Baby doll with articulated limbs attached to the body by elastic thread. Details for hair are carved on the head. Eyes are painted in blue and white, mouth is painted pink. Nose is missing a piece. Red paint or nail polish on the nails and lips. Narrative: Thea Borczuk (now Slawner) is the daughter of Leon Borczuk (b. 1906-02-22) and Anna Blimbaum Borczuk (b. 1910-11-16). Thea was born on May 7, 1939 in Warsaw, Poland. Leon worked as a foreman in a shoe factory in Gdansk, and Anna was employed as a bookkeeper. Thea entered the Warsaw ghetto as an infant. This doll was her only toy and most precious possession while living in the ghetto. The doll had been found by Thea’s father in an abandonned apartment in their building. The Borczuk family remained in the ghetto until the ghetto's liquidation in 1943. A few days before the ghetto uprising, Anna left with her labor detail but did not return in the evening. The following day, another woman brought Thea with her to work. After leaving the ghetto, Thea found her mother, who had assumed a new Christian identity. Thea spent the rest of the war with her mother in Lublin under the false names of Antonia and Teresa Kwasniewska. Leon, who had remained in the ghetto, was sent on a deportation train to Treblinka. He managed, however, to jump from the train. He survived the war hidden in the woods and later in an underground bunker. Leon and Anna were able to maintain intermittent contact by writing to one other at a prearranged address. Thea was liberated in Lublin at the age of five and a half. She and Anna returned to Warsaw following Liberation and reunited with Leon. Thea could only recognize her father by his moustache. Thea started school in Warsaw before leaving with her parents for France. In 1950, the family sailed from Le Havre, France to Canada and settled in Montreal. Though Thea and her parents survived, her grandparents, Abram Blimbaum and Brandla Fajerstejn Blimbaum were both killed in Treblinka. In Montreal, Thea’s own children played with the doll and painted its nails and lips with red nail polish.

Location

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Genre / form

object

In the picture

BabyChildTagged automatically by a vision model; may contain mistakes.

Text in the image

cjhn.caRead automatically; may contain mistakes.

Harvested

2026-10-19T03:21:16Z · source datestamp n/a · andornot

Digital objects at the source

• imageOpen original at source ↗2011X-81-01.jpg
• imageOpen original at source ↗2011X-81-01a.jpg