This past month, we received a unique donation when Cora Sue Anthony brought us a suitcase full of doilies on behalf of her friend Helga Gladis, along with an extraordinary story.
It was with a terrible sense of urgency that young Helga's aunt buried this suitcase in the ground, full of the family photographs, silver candlesticks and plates, lace doilies.
This proved a prescient action, for it would not be long before Helga's entire family was taken from the Polish ghetto in which they'd been living. Ultimately they were taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and Helga was the only one among them who survived the ordeal.
Helga must have witnessed or assisted her aunt in entrusting this precious cache to the earth for safekeeping, and that sense of urgency made a great impression. She never forgot the precise location where her aunt buried that cache. Decades passed before Helga could act on that indelible memory.
As an adult, Helga witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union on the news. She then endeavored to return to Poland for the express purpose of retrieving the case, along with the soil of her Polish homeland, which she carefully deposited into small glass jars that (with especially poignant resonance) once held baby food.
We can only imagine the full scope of her emotion, as Helga retrieved this beloved burden—native soil, lace doilies, family photos, candlesticks and plates of silver so tarnished they were black as soot. She took it back with her to the United States, where she had resettled, and built her life.
This suitcase is a powerful thing, and Lacis Museum now bears the responsibility of its stewardship. We thank Cora Anthony, Helga Gladis's confidante and neighbor for many years, for looking after it for so long, and now bringing it to us.
It tips the scales with an emotional weight far heavier than its four pounds and eleven ounces. The impact it has had is far larger than its physical dimensions — 25 inches long by 14 inches wide, six inches deep — would suggest. Its capacity for the inherent lessons it holds for humanity is limitless.
We hope this story travels farther than the suitcase itself has: farther and deeper. We must now all carry together that shared emotional weight that Helga once shouldered alone, for this burden belongs to all of us who can remember, and learn.