Amulet Created By Son For His Mother in Lodz Ghetto Recovered

Image by Shem Olam Institute
The existence of an amulet created in the Lodz Ghetto by a son for his mother was recently discovered.
“With love to Mom, from Avram. Lodz Ghetto. March, 1943,” reads the inscription on the amulet, made from two old coins. The son apparently created the amulet for his mother so she would not forget him if he was sent to the gas chambers.
The amulet, which also includes a drawing of the ghetto and the mother’s initials, was given this week to the Shem Olam Institute for Education, Documentation and Research on Faith and the Holocaust located in Kfar Haroeh in Israel, Ynet reported.
The amulet reportedly was found in the ruins of the ghetto by a Polish man. His heirs turned it over to the institute.
The institute told Ynet that the son and his mother were sent to a death camp the year after the amulet was created, and that other family members including a husband and father, and older brothers and sons were sent to a labor camp and then died in a death camp the year before the amulet was created.
“The exciting discovery tells of a love story between a son and his mother,” Rabbi Dr. Avraham Krieger, director of the Shem Olam Institute of Holocaust Studies, told Ynet. “More than anything, in the face of oppression and extermination, they wanted to remember each other from inside one of the most crowded and cruel ghettos in Poland.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.