Bar of soap preserved by Czech Jewish concentration camp survivors

Ivan Kalina was born on May 22, 1932, in Kosice, Czechoslovakia. His father was a leading member of their synagogue. Ivan and his family fled from Kosice to Hungary, sometime after the 1938 dismemberment of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany and its allies. Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944. The family went into hiding in Budapest that May, using falsified Aryan identity documents. Budapest was liberated in February 1945. The family returned to Kosice after the war ended in May 1945. Bar of soap brought home by returning concentration camp survivors to the temple in Kosice, Czechoslovakia, for proper burial. The soap was used in the concentration camp and the inmates believed that it was made from human fat, although this was not true. The soap was preserved by Ivan Kalina's father, a leading members of the Kosice congregation, who took it home for safeguarding and as a memory of the Holocaust. Ivan, 13 at the war's end, and his family had fled from Kosice to Hungary, after the 1938-39 collapse of Czechoslovakia. The family survived in hiding in Budapest using falsified Aryan identity documents from May 1944 until the city was liberated in February 1945. They returned to Kosice after the war ended in May 1945. No restrictions on access