From the outside, it looked like any of the other mugs in the Auschwitz museum.

But on the inside, this one had a secret — faithfully kept for seven decades.

Every effort to hide valuables “shows that the Jewish families constantly had a ray of hope that these items will be required for their existence,” Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywińsk

A false bottom concealed a gold necklace and a gold ring inlaid with stones.

The enameled mug was one of more than 12,000 pieces of kitchenware that Nazis stole from people sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland.