How One Doll Saved a Life: A True Holocaust Rescue Story

Many little girls have dolls they love with all their hearts — but how many can say their doll saved their life? For Tzipi Cohen, long past childhood, one doll did exactly that. Born in Budapest, Tzipi received the doll for her birthday just before the Nazis invaded Hungary. Her father was conscripted into a work detachment, and she remained with her mother, grandmother and brother. When the deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz began, Tzipi’s mother decided to send her to a Red Cross children’s home in Budapest that had opened its doors to Jewish children.

A risky decision guided by a toy

Tzipi didn’t like the Red Cross home. In her habit of having long talks with her doll — the only stable thing in the storm around her — she “consulted” it about whether to stay in the strange place or try to return home. The doll, so she felt, “recommended” going back. Without telling anyone, she slipped out of the Red Cross home and set off to go home. As you might expect, she got lost.

Night fell and Tzipi still hadn’t found her way back, but she had the doll, and it made her feel calmer. Exhausted, she fell asleep on the curb. In the morning a kind passerby found her and returned her to her mother. Only later did the full scale of the miracle become clear: that same night, members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross militia raided the Red Cross home, rounded up the Jewish children and threw them into the Danube. Tzipi’s escape from the Red Cross home saved her life. In the end, she and her immediate family all survived the Holocaust.

Tzipi Cohen Holocaust Survivor

A lifetime companion entrusted to history

Today Cohen lives in Kfar HaRoeh, is a mother of two and grandmother to more than ten grandchildren. After 72 years during which the life-saving doll accompanied her everywhere, she decided it was time to part with it and entrusted the relic to the Shem Olam Institute — a Holocaust research and documentation center that collects inspirational survivor stories and develops educational materials for all ages.

“We focus on the spiritual world during the Holocaust,” explains Rabbi Moshe Chava, head of the Institute’s education department. “Our goal is to study human resilience and teach about it. We also have a publishing arm that issues survivors’ stories in novel form after a year of close collaboration between the author and the survivor.”

The Institute’s children’s author has adapted Tzipi’s story of the doll and the intuition that saved her — a tale of a small girl, her doll, keen instinct and, above all, many miracles.