Coworker claims she has an appalling WW2 artifact.

Last night a coworker was telling us (me and another woman) that she had, from her great grandfather, a doll whose hair was from Jewish victims. My impression of her has always been that she is sweet and guileless but very naive so I don’t think she would make this up for attention. It was in the context of a conversation about collecting dolls. We both told her that she needed to contact a synagogue immediately and turn it in to someone. She said she had looked into donating to an occult museum at one point and that now it was “put up” whatever that means. I think she really doesn’t understand why we were so freaked out and I also don’t know if what we told her to do was the right thing. I don’t have a lot of faith that she will move forward with trying to get rid of this “interesting family heirloom” and I can’t stop thinking about it. And maybe I’m being too nice about all of this but it was pretty shocking coming a person who has never pinged my radar for views that would make this acceptable. If this is not resolved in a respectful way this week I’m going to discus this with my employer because…..you can’t tell people at work about your racist corpse doll and then keep it like it‘s fine.

I’d like to know if there is a better course of action to take with this doll, if this is a common thing people claim to have and I should ignore it, if there is an organization you recommend contacting who can ask her for it. I don’t know. I’m so sorry.

Edit-, I realized I was not clear on the origin. The great grandfather in question was German not American. I would have given this less weight had he been on the Allied side of things.

And I have contacted and gotten a reply from Dr. Halperin regarding the Dachau Ashes project and will be doing my best to get the info needed for verification and potential testing.

I need to step away from this for a bit. I will do my best to respond when I have had a chance to settle my brain and emotions. This is not the kind of the thing you prepare for and I’m out of tools at the moment. Thank you all for your input and advice.