A Doll of Miracles: The Moving Story of a Holocaust Survivor

Many young girls have dolls to which they are deeply attached, but how many can say they owe their lives to a doll?

For Tzipi Cohen, no longer a young girl, she has just such a doll. Cohen, born in Budapest, received the doll for her birthday, just before the Nazis invaded Hungary. Tzipi's father was drafted into a labor battalion, leaving her with her mother, grandmother, and brother. When the deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began, Tzipi's mother decided to send her to the Red Cross home in Budapest, which opened its doors to Jewish children.

The Red Cross perhaps hoped to save Jews, but Tzipi didn't like the place. Faithful to her habit of having long conversations with her doll—her only constant in the storm around her—she consulted with it: should she stay in the strange and unfriendly place or try to return home? The doll 'recommended', as little Tzipi felt, to go home. And so, without telling anyone, she left the Red Cross home in an attempt to return home. As expected, she got lost.

Tzipi Cohen Holocaust Survivor

Evening fell, and she still hadn't found her home. But the doll was with her, and she felt calm. When she was tired, she fell asleep on the sidewalk. In the morning, a kind passerby found her and returned her to her mother. Only later did the magnitude of the miracle become clear: that very night, members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party—the Hungarian fascist movement—raided the Red Cross home, took all the Jewish children, and threw them into the Danube River. Tzipi's escape from the Red Cross home saved her life. Eventually, she and her immediate family all survived the Holocaust.

Cohen now lives in Kfar HaRoeh, mother to two children and grandmother to more than ten grandchildren. After 72 years during which the life-saving doll accompanied her everywhere, she decided to part with it and entrusted it to the 'Shem Olam' Institute, a research and documentation institute focused on collecting inspiring stories of survivors and developing educational materials for all ages.

"We focus on the spiritual world during the Holocaust," explains Rabbi Moshe Haba, head of the institute's education department. "Our aim is to research human strength and teach about it. We also have a publishing house, which produces survivors' stories in the form of novels, following a profound year-long collaboration between the writer and the survivor." The publishing house, he explains, also has a children's book section. The institute's children's author has already adapted the story of Tzipi and the doll, and it will be published soon: a story about a little girl who had a doll, a healthy intuition—and above all, many miracles.