Cross made of tooth brush

A simple cross made of the bone handle of a tooth brush, using a piece of broken glass. The upper part contains a hole through which a string was pulled to suspend the cross. The cross is a piece of memorabilia of the Polish prisoners held in the Soviet camps during World War II.
During the 15 months of the Soviet occupation of Poland, around 475,000 citizens of the Second Republic of Poland fell victim to the Soviet violence. The number includes people who were imprisoned, convicted and deported to forced labour camps, prisoners of war, young people forced to join the Red, and everybody who was sent, through more or less coercive measures, to work in the Soviet factories and mines. Until the signing of the Sikorski-Majski agreement which resulted in issuing by the Soviet authorities of the Amnesty Act (August 1941) for the deported Polish citizens, over 58, 000 of Poles in the Soviet labour camps, forced settlements, mines and in exile, starved to death, or died of cold, diseases and exhaustion caused by hard physical labour and relegation to the margins of the Soviet Society.