Auschwitz mug hides golden secret

War History Online has an article about hidden gold:

Curators of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum recently made a remarkable discovery: one of the enamel mugs in their collection contained a gold ring (photo, bottom) and a necklace, hidden beneath a false bottom (photo, top). That “lid” of the hidden compartment had slowly eroded, revealing the secret within.
The enamel Auschwitz mug is just one of twelve thousand cups, pots, bowls, kettles, and jugs on display in the museum. These items were taken by the Germans from the luggage of people who arrived at the concentration camp during World War Two. Inside the small hidden compartment of this particular relic was a woman’s gold ring and a necklace, wrapped in a piece of canvas. Tests confirmed that the valuables were made in Poland sometime between 1921 and 1931.
While the museum staff will preserve the items, they admit that their chances of finding the jewelry’s original owners are slim. So far, they have found no trace that might help determine the identity of whoever the items belonged to.
The secretion of valuable objects was common during World War Two, as prisoners on their way to the concentration camps attempted to hide their belongings from Nazi soldiers. Their captors would lie to the Jewish people they were rounding up, saying that they were only being resettled, and urging them to take a small amount of luggage with them. The Germans soldiers’ ulterior motive was, of course, to find the last valuables of the deported families.
For the staff at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the newly discovered objects confirm two things. First, that some of the Jewish prisoners were aware of the true intentions of the Germans who allowed them to bring luggage. The second and more poignant fact, however, is that Jewish families went into the darkest of situations with the hope that, some day, they would need these precious items once again.When Nazis deported Jews to the concentration camps, they usually told their victims they were being "resettled", and that they could bring a few small suitcases of possessions. It was a calculated ruse; they knew the families would pack as many valuables as possible into their luggage to help fund their new lives. When they arrived at the camps, guards rifled through their belongings to loot hidden jewelry, money, and other valuable possessions. At the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum​, visitors can still see piles of pillaged suitcases with the names of the original owners written on the sides.
Recently, staff at the museum found that at least one family treasure made it though the camp undiscovered, according to a new press release. Under a false bottom in an enameled cup (photo), staff members found a carefully hidden ring and a necklace. The cup was part of the institution's collection of twelve thousand pieces of kitchenware, including jugs, cups, and bowls, that the Nazis looted from camp inmates.
While curators were working with the kitchenware in the museum’s main hall, the false bottom separated, after more than seventy years of degradation. “Under it was a women’s ring made of gold and a necklace, wrapped in a piece of canvas,” says museum staffer Hanna Kubik in the release. Kubik says the ring, which has several stones mounted on it, and the chain, were tested and are consistent with gold used to make jewelry in Poland between 1921 and 1931. However, there are no markings or any way to trace the jewelry back to the individual or family that owned it.
The jewelry tells a story of tragedy but also hope. As museum director Piotr M. A. Cywiński says in the statement: “The hiding of valuable items, repeatedly mentioned in the accounts of survivors, and which was the reason for ripping and careful search of clothes and suitcases in the warehouse for looted items, proves on the one hand to the awareness of the victims as to the robbery nature of the deportation, but on the other hand it shows that the Jewish families constantly had a ray of hope that these items would be required for their existence.”
Much of the gold stolen from concentration camp victims, including gold teeth, were melted down and made into ingots, which were deposited into the so-called Melmer Account at the Reichsbank. Much of that gold was then funneled through Switzerland, which, in 1998, began a billion-dollar payout as part of a settlement with concentration camp victims and their descendants.
The museum reports that it will store the jewelry in its collection in the way in which the victim hid it, to serve as further testimony of the fate that awaited Jews who were deported to the concentration and extermination camp.

Rico says human cleverness (and cruelty) knows no bounds...