Handmade Purim noisemaker from Holocaust transit camp donated to Yad Vashem

With the holiday of Purim on the horizon, Yad Vashem has added to its collection a Purim noisemaker, also called a ‘grogger,’ that speaks to the resilience of Jewish life through the hell of the Holocaust. 

The grogger belonged to the late Marcel Micenmacher, who survived the Holocaust with few other objects to serve as mementos from his parents, who were murdered at Auschwitz in 1942. 

Micenmacher’s father Kalman handcrafted the noisemaker for him in 1941, inscribing on it a dedication that reads (in French) “souvenir to my son Marcel.” 

The inscription also indicates that the grogger came from Beaune La Rolande, France, the site of the Nazi-supervised government’s Beaune-la-Rolande transit camp for foreign-born French Jews. 

Kalman and his wife, Marcel’s mother Anne, were arrested on July 16, 1942, and deported to Auschwitz one week later, where they were murdered shortly after arrival. Of the 2,000 Jews taken on that transport, just five are known to have survived.  

The noisemaker is part of Yad Vashem’s Gathering the Fragments program to collect Holocaust-era documents, photographs, and artifacts to tell the story of the Holocaust to future generations.

Echoes of Purim in the Holocaust and present-day

After the war, Marcel used the noisemaker to drown out the name of Haman during the reading of the Book of Esther on Purim, as is tradition. 

The holiday, which commemorates the miraculous redemption of the Jews of ancient Persia from a genocidal decree, has for many a particular resonance this year amid the ongoing war against Hamas.