Letter from Holocaust survivor found at flea market decades later

A long-lost letter from a freed Holocaust survivor was sold by a flea market vendor and returned to the family decades later.

Thrift stores, antique fairs and flea markets in New York City are prime spots for finding valuable, hidden family heirlooms. When Chelsey Brown, an avid thrifter, was shown a letter written more than 75 years ago at the end of the Holocaust by a survivor, she knew where it belonged.

"The second that I had it transcribed, I just knew it had to go back to the right family," Brown said. She found the note in late 2021.

The letter was written by Ilse Loewenberg, a woman who jumped out of a moving train that was headed to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943. She was part of an underground Nazi resistance group called Gemeinschaft für Frieden und Aufbau, or the Association for Peace and Development.

According to later documentation from her sister, Loewenberg walked a three-day-long journey back to Berlin after escaping.