Abe Fingerhut papers

Abe Fingerhut was born on December 27, 1910, in Łódź, Poland, to Samuel and Chana Fingerhut. He was the second of four children, an older and younger sister, and a brother Josef. They were from a shtetl, Averchek (?), a small town with a large Jewish population, and had relocated to Łódź for job opportunities in the large textile industry. As a child, Abe had been recruited to sing with the Yiddish theater star, Molly Picon, and in Łódź, he sang at the Reform synagogue. Abe attended a Jewish high school and spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, German, and Russian. He worked in the textile industry as a tailor. He met his wife in 1930, but they could not marry until her older sister, who had left for Palestine, wed in Tel Aviv. The family had Zionist sympathies and in 1933, Abe’s younger sister immigrated to Palestine, joining an aunt and uncle already there. Abe and his wife had a son Josek, born on July 8, 1939. They lived in a mixed neighborhood in Łódź and were connected to both the Jewish and Polish societies. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Jews in Łódź began to experience persecution almost immediately. In February 1940, the ghetto was created. Abe and his family were put in the ghetto, where Abe worked in the ghetto textile industry. On May 1, 1940, the ghetto was sealed with barbed wire fencing. On July 9, 1941, Josek, age 2, died. When the ghetto was being evacuated, Abe attempted to bribe a guard to take care of his parents. Abe remained in Łódź until the day before the ghetto was liquidated on August 4, 1944, when he was sent to Auschwitz. On September 10, 1944, Abe was deported to Siegmar-Schoenau labor camp, a subcamp of Flossenbürg concentration camp, and assigned prisoner number 26495. In January 1945, the prisoners were forced to march to Hohenstein-Ernstthal labor camp. The camp was evacuated in April and the prisoners marched toward Flossenbürg. On May 7, 1945, the day Germany surrendered, Abe was liberated by Soviet forces in Luditz (Zlutice, Czech Republic). Abe’s family perished in the Holocaust. His wife was deported to be a forced laborer and the family believed she was sent to Stutthof and died on a ferry that sank. Abe’s parents, Samuel and Chana, were deported to Chelmno killing center. After liberation, Abe returned to Łódź and lived with a group of survivors. He dug up family photographs that he had buried. Over time, he began to feel threatened by the Soviet occupation and people started to disappear. They decided to flee west and register as displaced persons. Abe went to Lampertheim displaced persons camp in Germany. On July 1, 1947, he left for Bremen, where he boarded the SS Marine Marlin on July 8, arriving in New York on July 17. His emigration was sponsored by his uncle, Harris Kleinfeld, who lived in Brooklyn. Shortly after arriving, he moved to Chelsea, Massachusetts, to stay with distant cousins. He worked in a haberdashery. He Americanized his name to Albert Finger. He married in 1949 and had two children. The family settled in Quincy, MA, where Albert purchased a tailor shop. He retired in 1973 and moved to Florida in 1976. Albert, age 80, died on September 1, 1991, in Palm Beach, Florida.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Diane Finger

Diane Finger donated the Abe Fingerhut papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2013.