On Saturday, a British auction house took bids for a timepiece with Hebrew numbering that was found on the body of Sinai Kantor, one of the many passengers who didn’t survive the sinking of the Titanic. Jackie Hajdenberg writes:
Numbers on the Swiss-made, silver-on-brass watch are written in Hebrew numerals and its hands are nearly all deteriorated, due to saltwater exposure—but dried water marks indicate that time stopped at 2:25 a.m., about five minutes after the Titanic sank. Its back features an embossed, solemn, muscular Moses holding the Ten Commandments on a background of date palms.
The silver pocket watch once belonged to Kantor, thirty-four, a second-class passenger traveling with his wife Miriam, twenty-four. The pair were recently married university graduates, on their way to New York where Kantor planned to sell furs while they studied dentistry and medicine, as part of a flood of Jewish immigration underway at the time.
Miriam alone was saved on lifeboat 12, according to information provided by the auction house.
Read more on JTA: https://www.jta.org/2023/11/10/culture/hebrew-pocket-watch-frozen-in-time-of-titanic-wreck-headed-for-auction