Her sister's blouse

For years this blouse hung in Hela Stein’s closet. This simple piece of clothing is all that remains of her four sisters, the only trace of their existence. Hela hid during the war and was the only member of her family to survive. While she did not know which sister the blouse belonged to, it remained her one connection to her family and life before the war.

Opening the closet doors where she had placed the item, Hela would from time to time stare at the blouse; the simple act of looking without saying a word was an act of remembrance.

For her daughter who inherited the blouse upon her mother’s death, the item encapsulated both her mother’s losses and her own relationship to her mother’s trauma. The blouse has come to symbolise those aspects of the Holocaust experience that could not be healed and would be carried forward to the next generations.