Identification tag 68122 worn by a Jewish slave laborer at Ebensee/Mauthausen concentration camp

Identification tag issued to eighteen year old Lou Dunst when he was imprisoned in Mauthausen concentration camp in 1944-45. The bracelet was wired to his wrist and the band was made from Cyklon B cans that were used to gas the prisoners. In 1944, Lou and his family were deported from Jasina, Czechoslovakia (Yasinya, Ukraine), to Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp. His mother, Priva, was sent to the gas chambers. Lou and his older brother, Irving, were sent to Mauthausen: Lou was given the id tag 68122 and Irving, number 68123. They then were sent to Ebensee where they were slave laborers building tunnels for the underground rocket factory. The death rate from disease, overwork, and starvation was in the thousands. Lou became delirious and so ill that he climbed onto a pile of corpses outside the crematorium, ready to die. But that was the day the US Army, 80th Division, entered the camp and freed the prisoners, May 6, 1945. Lou's brother found him and made sure that Lou got medical care as quickly as possible. They learned that their father, Mordekhai, had died in a concentration camp but their sister, Rusena, had survived.