Archeologists from Israel’s Antiquities Authority were excavating the site of a Nazi death camp in Poland when they discovered mass graves, gas chambers and a small silver pendant with a date, the place name Frankfurt, and the Hebrew words “mazal tov” written on it. The pendant’s discovery set off a chain of events that brought together the long-lost relatives of the little girl who once wore the pendent. The girl’s name was Karoline Cohn, and over 30 of her relatives will unite in Frankfurt, Germany, her hometown, next week.

“We had this person who was completely forgotten, even by her surrounding relatives,” said Chaim Motzen, an amateur genealogist who helped reconstruct Karoline’s family tree. “Through this pendant, people are learning about each other and their history.”

Researchers in Israel used archive records and the information on the pendent to uncover Karoline’s identity. Documentation revealed that she was 11 years old when she and her family were deported from Frankfurt to Belarus in 1941. She was sent to the camp in Nazi-occupied Poland two years later, where she died of unknown causes.