Beautiful Diamond Solitaire Ring
14k yellow gold, the ring mounted with a round brilliant-cut diamond weighing 3.79 carats, color N and clarity VS1, GIA report #6224425241. size 8, total weight 3.6 grams

Provenance: A gift from Jakob Kaminkski to wife Lucja Kaminski, Lodz, Poland and Huddersfield, England; Descended in the family.

Notes: On an evening in 1950, Jakob Kaminski arrived at his home in Huddersfield, England carrying a small box that contained a present for his wife, Lucja.  On opening it, she was overwhelmed to find a diamond ring, larger than any she had ever seen. This, Jakob told her, was in honor of her courage and fortitude without which, he said, he would not have survived the horrors of recent years. Jakob and Lucja had lived in Lodz, Poland when the Nazis invaded in 1939, and as friends and neighbors were rounded up, a Christian friend offered the couple a hiding place in his small house. For six years, Jakob and Lucja stayed hidden as their beloved city was transformed into a site of brutality, enslavement, and murder. Jakob struggled, certain that each day would be their last with the Nazis finding them. Lucja would not tolerate his fears. They needed to hold out, she told him, to outlive the Nazis, to survive so they could reveal the truth of how their slain neighbors had suffered.  

The couple emerged from hiding in early 1945 when the Russians liberated Lodz. Jakob and Lucja then headed to England, where their daughter Janina had been working with the Polish Government in Exile during the war. Jakob spent five years building a business, and once he had saved up the money, he told a local jeweler of the time in hiding, and how he wished to express to Lucja how her resilience had helped them both survive. In the end, this is far more than a diamond ring. It is a symbol of one woman’s courage in the face of a world gone mad.

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