Aluminum ring with an engraved letter and prisoner number owned by a political prisoner of Buchenwald
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Washington, United States
Engraved aluminum ring that belonged to 29 year old Ivan (Johann) Bole, who was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp from November 1944 - April 1945. It is engraved with a J (Jugoslawisch) and an inverted triangle, the symbols Ivan was labelled with to identify him as a Yugoslavian political prisoner. Ivan, a Catholic, was a lawyer in Laibach, Yugoslavia (Ljubljana, Slovenia) when the Axis powers, led by Nazi Germany, invaded in April 1941. Laibach was annexed by Italy. Ivan went to Venice with the Slovenian Red Cross. In September 1944, he was arrested by the German SS for smuggling a radio transmitter into Trieste. In November, Ivan was sent to Buchenwald in Germany and assigned prisoner number 67186. He was assigned to work commando A6 in Wanz-leben am See. The camp was liberated on April 11, 1945, by US troops. Germany surrendered on May 7. Ivan lived as a displaced person in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and emigrated to America in 1950.
- Title: Aluminum ring with an engraved letter and prisoner number owned by a political prisoner of Buchenwald
- Location: Yugoslavia--History--Axis occupation, 1941-1945--Biography.
- Provenance: The ring was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2011 by Lorraine DeMaio, the daughter of John Bole.
- Subject Keywords: Concentration camp inmates--Germany--Weimar--Biography. Political prisoners--Germany--Biography. Political prisoners--Yugoslavia--Biography. World War, 1939-1945--Italy--Trieste. World War, 1939-1945--Prisoners and prisons, German--Personal narratives. World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--Personal narratives.
- Type: Jewelry
- Rights: Permanent Collection
- External Link: See the full record at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Medium: Pressed aluminum finger ring with a flat rectangular face with an engraved inverted triangle with a letter J above a rectangle with numbers. It has ribbed shoulders and 2 engraved lines on each side of the band which is wide at the top and narrows to the bottom. The band is uneven and scratched.
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