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Lohmann: His mother’s sweater was ‘our lifeline’ during WWII

Jay Ipson admires a replica of a sweater his mother wore past the Nazis in World War II. “Never give into the bully,” he said when asked what message he wants it to send.

Holocaust survivor Jay Ipson celebrated his 81st birthday by showing off a gift he’s wanted for a long time: his mother’s sweater.

Or, in actuality, a very close reproduction.

“It was our lifeline,” Ipson said of the sweater.

And he wants others to see the sweater and know the story.

The original sweater is long gone, lost to the years — “She wore it out,” he says — but the yarn behind it (so to speak) remains as vivid and significant as ever to Ipson.

One of the founders of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, Ipson had long wanted to have another sweater made and put it on display, but it never happened. The death of his mother, Edna Butrimovitz Ipson, last fall at the age of 103, spurred him to action.

One thing led to another, which led him to the Knitting Basket on Grove Avenue. He presented a photo of his mother wearing the sweater on the occasion of liberation from the Nazis in 1945. He was told the sweater could be replicated, and it was. He picked it up last month, and now it is worn by a mannequin in a new classroom in his home.

Here’s the story of why the sweater is so important to Ipson and should be to others:

The Ipson family was part of the beleaguered Jewish minority in Lithuania before World War II, and then things got worse. The Russians invaded in 1940, then came the Germans a year later. Paper money was useless, Ipson recalled, but his family was fortunate enough — his father had been an attorney before he was barred from practicing because he was Jewish — to have a few gold coins.

But it would have been dangerous for Jews to be found with gold, so Ipson’s mother opened the buttons on her favorite wool sweater, inserted a gold coin in each and then recovered the buttons with fabric. She and her husband, Israel, figured the gold might become necessary at some point to buy food or freedom for her family.

When the Ipsons were forced into a ghetto in 1941, Ipson’s mother wore the sweater past the Nazis, who confiscated the rest of the family’s belongings but never caught on to the sweater ruse.

When the family escaped the ghetto, which had become a concentration camp in 1943, she wore the sweater. When the family hid in a barn in the countryside and later spent six months in an underground shelter dug beneath a potato field, she wore the sweater.

Through all of their hardships and brushes with death, Edna Ipson wore the sweater, always comforted in knowing she was wearing the family’s insurance policy. When the family arrived in the United States and Richmond after the war, she wore it still.

Once in America, she cut open the buttons. Jay Ipson keeps the seven gold coins in a safe-deposit box, along with a gold bracelet she wore beneath her sleeves through the ordeal. The bracelet had been made from other gold coins that were melted down. The new sweater has U.S. quarters for buttons instead of gold coins.

He found a mannequin at Diversity Thrift, and he asked his friend and colleague Dianna Gabay, an artist and retired curator at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, to make the mannequin resemble his mother. (The mannequin is taller than his mother was, “But that’s what they had,” he said with a laugh.)

“It is always an honor to help Jay bring his experiences to life and explain his history and the Holocaust,” Gabay said. “I have really enjoyed working with him … to help him continue his mission to teach tolerance and the Holocaust.”

Ipson and his white cowboy hat — a personal trademark he picked up in the 1960s — have long been in the public eye. He has offered a strong and eloquent voice as a spokesman for those who experienced the Holocaust. He left the Virginia Holocaust Museum in 2012, but he didn’t want it to be the end of his days as a community resource.

“I decided I was just going to fold up and go away,” he said. “I was going to start teaching and go around the country giving lectures at no cost.”

Most recently, he finished enclosing a backyard deck at his home so it can be used as a classroom of sorts for visitors who come to learn about the experience of the Ipsons, part of a small percentage of Lithuanian Jews to survive the war. He already had turned part of his home into a Holocaust library. And, now, he has his mother’s sweater.

As it turned out, the Ipsons did not need those gold coins during their arduous journey, but the story of those coins and the sweater is of value forever.

“Never give into the bully,” he said when asked what message he wants the sweater to send. “Think. There might be a way to save your life. This sweater was our life preserver.”

 

 wlohmann@timesdispatch.com