Star of David badge with Jude printed in the center worn by a Czech Jewish prisoner

Star of David badge printed with Jude, German for Jew, owned by Charles (Karel) and Hana Bruml. This badge may have been worn by one of them. It is the type they would have been required to wear beginning September 1941 in German occupied Prague. Nazi Germany annexed Prague in March 1939. On December 10, 1941, Karel, his parents, Jindrich and Irma, siblings, Anna and Otto, and Otto’s wife Irma were sent to Theresienstadt ghetto-labor camp. Karel worked in the technical department. On October 26, 1942, Karel’s parents and sister were selected for deportation and Karel volunteered to go with them. They were sent to Auschwitz. Karel was then force marched to Auschwitz III - Monowitz (Buna) concentration camp. In early 1945, he was transferred to Gleiwitz, Nordhausen, and Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated on April 15. Hana and her then husband Rudolf Schiff were sent to Theresienstadt in August 1942. Rudolf, his parents, and his brother were deported to Auschwitz in December 1943 and killed. Hana was deported to Auschwitz in October 1944, and then sent to Kudowa-Sackisch slave labor camp where she was freed in May 1945. Hana and Karel returned to Prague where they met while searching for relatives. They found few survivors. They both left for the United States in 1946, where they married.