Treblinka 2017, Layer 1002, Partial Scissors

This pair of scissors (partial) was recovered during the 2017 excavations, and was one of seven such examples, all thought to be personal artefacts that belonged to victims. The treatment of such personal belongings can be assumed to have been similar at Treblinka to how it was at the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau – victims were made to offer up all of their personal artefacts to guards when they arrived at the gates . Their belongings would then be sorted in a region of the camp dubbed the ‘Canada’ region, as the Nazis believed Canada to be a wealthy, bountiful country. Next followed shipment of the items to Germany, to be given to German civilians or used in industry.