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Mirjam Finkelstein
Mirjam Finkelstein
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Mirjam Finkelstein (née Wiener; 10 June 1933 – 28 January 2017) was a Holocaust survivor and educator.[1][2] Born in Berlin, Germany, to Alfred Wiener, a Jewish activist and founder of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide,[3] she moved with her family to Amsterdam in 1933.[4] There, she grew up in the same community as Anne Frank and they knew each other as children.[5]

In June 1943, Finkelstein was taken by the Nazis along with her mother and sisters to Westerbork transit camp and then to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.[6][7] She was one of the eye witnesses to the presence in Bergen-Belsen of Anne Frank and her sister, Margot. When she saw them arrive at the camp, her sister Ruth took out a forbidden pocket diary and wrote a note about their arrival, which later became important evidence of Anne Frank's whereabouts after the war.[5] Mirjam's father, who had managed to reach London in 1939, was able to obtain fake Paraguayan passports for his family, but the visas arrived after the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940. The other members of the family were included as part of a prisoner exchange at the Swiss border in January 1945.[4][8][9] German soldiers still boarded the train to take them to another camp. With her two sisters, Ruth and Eva, Mirjam Wiener successfully pressed them to allow their safe passage on the train from Bergen-Belsen because their mother was too ill to move. Other ill prisoners were removed instead. Margarethe, her mother, died from starvation after her arrival in Switzerland.[9]

Finkelstein settled in London, spending the rest of her life on behalf of the Anne Frank Foundation and the Holocaust Educational Trust, visiting schools to talk about her experiences during the Holocaust.[9] In 2016, she was photographed for the book Survivor.[5]

She married Ludwik Finkelstein. The couple had three children: Daniel Finkelstein, Anthony Finkelstein and Tamara Finkelstein.[8]

See also

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References

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Mirjam Finkelstein

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Mirjam Finkelstein (née Wiener; 10 June 1933 – 28 January 2017) was a Holocaust survivor and educator whose life spanned flight from Nazi Germany, internment in concentration camps, and post-war testimony preserving the historical record of Jewish persecution. Born in Berlin to Alfred Wiener, an early anti-Nazi activist and founder of the Wiener Library—a key archival resource on Nazi crimes—and his wife Margarethe, she was the youngest of three daughters. Her family relocated to Amsterdam in 1934 to evade rising antisemitism, where they resided above the Jewish Central Information Office amid a tightening web of restrictions. As a child in Amsterdam's Jewish quarter, Finkelstein knew , whose family lived nearby, sharing everyday experiences before the 1940 German invasion escalated deportations. In June 1943, at age ten, she was deported with her mother and sisters to the , then transferred to Bergen-Belsen, enduring starvation, disease, and death marches amid the camp's collapse. Her survival hinged on a prisoner exchange to , enabled by false Paraguayan passports her father had arranged from exile in , though her mother died hours after crossing the border from typhus-related exhaustion. After brief relocation to the and reunion with her father, Finkelstein settled permanently in by 1947. In adulthood, she studied , chemistry, and physics, qualifying as a and working in before shifting focus to Holocaust outreach. Finkelstein shared her firsthand account with students, politicians, and media, emphasizing the contingencies of survival—combining family ingenuity, timing, and sheer fortune—through organizations like the Educational Trust, countering sanitized narratives with raw detail on camp conditions and familial loss. She married Ludwik Finkelstein, a Polish-Jewish engineer and fellow who advanced science, and raised three children—Daniel, Tamara, and —in , with her experiences later chronicled in her son Daniel's historical account of the family's ordeals under both Nazi and Soviet regimes.

Early Life

Birth and Family Background

Mirjam Wiener, later Finkelstein, was born on June 10, 1933, in , . She was the youngest of three daughters born to , a Jewish scholar and early opponent of who documented anti-Semitic activities and later founded the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide, and his wife Margarethe Wiener (née Hirsch). Her older sisters were Ruth Hannah Wiener, born in 1927, and Eva Elise Wiener, born in 1930. The Wiener family was part of Berlin's Jewish intellectual community, with actively collecting evidence of Nazi atrocities from the early 1930s, which informed his decision to emigrate amid rising . This background of vigilance against emerging shaped the family's early circumstances, though Mirjam's infancy coincided with the consolidation of Nazi power following Hitler's appointment as in January 1933.

Relocation to Amsterdam

In the wake of the Nazi Party's rise to power in and escalating threats against Jewish opponents, , a prominent early critic who had begun documenting Nazi activities, received direct warnings from German authorities about the risks to his family. Fearing arrest or worse, he arranged for the emigration of his wife Margarete and their three young daughters—including newborn Mirjam, born June 10, 1933—from to , , later that year. The relocation, undertaken when Mirjam was mere months old, reflected Wiener's assessment that the neutral offered a temporary refuge from Germany's intensifying antisemitic policies and . Upon settling in , Alfred Wiener promptly reestablished his archival efforts by founding the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO) in late 1933 or early 1934, an institution dedicated to gathering and disseminating evidence of Nazi crimes to alert the world. The family integrated into the local Jewish community, with the children, including Mirjam, eventually attending the same Montessori school as , though the period of relative stability ended with the in May 1940.

Experiences During the Holocaust

Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands

The on May 10, 1940, subjected Mirjam Wiener, then aged six, her mother Margarethe, and sisters Ruth (born 1927) and Eva (born 1930) to Nazi occupation in , while their father Alfred had escaped to in 1939 to continue anti-Nazi documentation work. The family resided in a modest two-bedroom house on Jan van Eyckstraat, where Mirjam had enjoyed a relatively carefree early childhood playing on the streets and integrating into Dutch through school and local clubs. Progressive anti-Jewish measures eroded normalcy; by early 1941, prohibitions on Jews using buses and trams forced reliance on a blue scooter—thick-wheeled with a large , sent by Alfred—as the family's primary means of transport, which Mirjam later described as their "Rolls-Royce." She had attended the Montessori school alongside and , and participated in Hebrew classes at the Jewish Liberal Community Synagogue, the same venue used by the Frank family, fostering childhood acquaintances that persisted amid rising isolation. These institutions provided continuity, though occupation-era disruptions, such as being pulled from lessons for synagogue-related events amid Nazi oversight, underscored the encroaching threats. Alfred's efforts from , including procurement of forged Paraguayan passports, offered temporary evasion of summonses, allowing the family to remain in longer than many amid systematic registrations and neighborhood clearances. However, by mid-1943, intensified roundups targeting remaining shattered this fragile hold, culminating in the family's forcible removal from home on June 20, 1943, via cattle trucks, with Mirjam parting with her scooter to a non-Jewish friend.

Deportation to Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen

On 20 June 1943, Mirjam Wiener, then aged 10, her mother Margarethe, and sisters Ruth (aged 16) and Eva (aged 13) were arrested in an early-morning raid on their apartment at Johann Van Eyck Straat and deported to in the northeastern . The family had been detained despite Margarethe's attempts to invoke her late husband's war medals and their protected status, as her father, , had fled to the earlier that year to establish what became the Wiener Holocaust Library. Westerbork functioned primarily as a holding site for Dutch prior to further eastward, with over 100,000 individuals passing through its barbed-wire confines between 1942 and 1945. Mirjam later described the camp's most harrowing aspects as the extreme overcrowding in barracks housing thousands and the pervasive anxiety over weekly selections for trains bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where an estimated 60,000 Dutch perished. Prior to their own transfer, the family witnessed the deportation of relatives, including an aunt, uncle, and cousins, to Auschwitz, where they were killed upon arrival. Despite forced labor assignments—such as sewing uniforms or agricultural work—the camp's internal administration by Jewish councils offered minimal protections against the ultimate threat of extermination transports. After seven months in Westerbork, the Wiener women were deported in to near Celle, Germany, a site initially designated for "exchange Jews" and prisoners of value but which devolved into a site of mass death through , , and neglect, claiming over 50,000 lives by war's end. Unlike extermination camps with gas chambers, Bergen-Belsen relied on attrition, with receiving scant rations—often 200 grams of bread and watery soup daily—and no systematic medical care amid freezing temperatures and unsanitary conditions. Mirjam recalled the camp's bleak atmosphere, dominated by unrelenting cold that exacerbated hunger and illness among the roughly 10,000 women, children, and others held there at the time of her arrival. The family's continued under these privations until early 1945, when selections for potential exchanges began.

Survival and Liberation

In Bergen-Belsen, where Mirjam Wiener arrived in January 1944 at age ten alongside her mother Grete and sisters Ruth and Eva, prisoners endured severe deprivation including chronic , freezing temperatures without adequate clothing or heating, and prolonged roll calls in harsh weather that often resulted in collapses and deaths. Children like Wiener scavenged discarded food scraps such as peels to supplement meager rations, while adults including her mother performed forced labor like cleaning barracks or sorting shoes, expending vital energy amid widespread and . Grete coped with by mentally composing recipes, a psychological strategy to preserve morale amid the camp's brutality. By late 1944, Grete had weakened to the point of being deemed unfit for work on November 21, yet she passed a cursory medical examination on January 20, 1945, enabling the family's selection for a rare prisoner exchange negotiated between Nazi authorities and the , facilitated by false Paraguayan passports her father Alfred had arranged from . On January 21, 1945, Wiener and her immediate family underwent a final humiliating "" inspection before boarding a transport train to the Swiss border, departing the camp months before its liberation by British forces on April 15. The journey proved fatal for Grete, who, gravely ill from accumulated mistreatment and the train's privations, died in a Swiss hospital in St. Gallen on January 25, 1945, hours after crossing the border. Wiener, her sisters, and surviving family members then proceeded via Red Cross ship Gripsholm to New York, reuniting with and marking their escape from Nazi captivity through this exceptional exchange rather than battlefield liberation. Their survival hinged on familial proximity, the improbable intervention, and selection amid the camp's , underscoring the confluence of preparation and fortune in evading the higher mortality rates that claimed over 50,000 lives at Bergen-Belsen.

Post-War Reconstruction

Recovery and Reunion with Father

Following the prisoner exchange in January 1945, Mirjam Wiener and her sisters Ruth and Eva were transported from to , where their mother, Margarethe Wiener, succumbed to illness in a hospital shortly after arrival. The sisters, aged approximately 12, 14, and 11, then boarded the Red Cross ship Gripsholm for passage to the , arriving in New York in early 1945 amid efforts to facilitate for select survivors. In New York, Mirjam reunited with her father, , who had fled in 1939 and established residence in , traveling to the U.S. to meet his daughters after years of separation enforced by the war and deportations. This reunion marked a critical juncture in Mirjam's post-war stabilization, providing emotional anchor amid the trauma of camp internment, maternal loss, and displacement; Alfred, a documented anti-Nazi , supported the family's initial recovery through his networks in Jewish refugee organizations. Between 1945 and 1947, Mirjam resided in the United States, where she and her sisters underwent physical recuperation from and disease contracted in Bergen-Belsen, including outbreaks that had ravaged the camp. By 1947, Mirjam returned to the with her father, settling in to resume education at and School for Girls, signaling a transition from immediate survival to long-term reconstruction. This period involved gradual reintegration into civilian life, bolstered by Alfred's establishment of the Wiener Library in as a repository of Nazi-era , which indirectly aided family healing through purposeful archival work. The reunion and subsequent relocation underscored the fragmented yet resilient trajectories of , with Mirjam's case exemplifying rare exchanges that enabled partial family preservation despite the death of over 50,000 at Bergen-Belsen.

Settlement in England

In 1947, following two years in the United States where she had reunited with her father , Mirjam moved to with her sisters to join him, settling in the area. The family resided there as they rebuilt their lives after the war, with Alfred Wiener continuing his work preserving documentation through the Wiener Library, which he had established in the UK after fleeing in 1939. Mirjam completed her secondary education at and High School for Girls, focusing on , chemistry, and physics. She then studied chemistry further and began teaching at Hendon Preparatory School, marking her entry into professional life in . In 1957, she married Ludwik Finkelstein, a Polish-Jewish engineer and fellow who had escaped Soviet labor camps and settled in Britain after ; the couple met at a Jewish event in . They raised three children—Daniel, Tamara, and Anthony—in the city, establishing a stable family life amid 's Jewish community. This period solidified Mirjam's integration into British society, where she transitioned from survivor to educator and family matriarch.

Professional Career

Academic Training and Teaching

Following her reunion with her father and relocation to in 1947, Mirjam Finkelstein completed her secondary education at and School for Girls, where she studied , chemistry, and physics. She subsequently obtained a science degree, with a focus on chemistry. Finkelstein trained as a and held a position in the subject at Preparatory School. She continued her professional work as a for an extended period, applying a strong sense of duty to her classroom responsibilities.

Transition to Holocaust Education

Following her post-war education in mathematics, chemistry, and physics, Mirjam Finkelstein established a career as a mathematics teacher in the United Kingdom. She taught at institutions including Hendon Preparatory School, applying her academic training to secondary education until her retirement. In her later years, Finkelstein shifted focus from mathematics instruction to Holocaust education, leveraging her personal experiences as a survivor of Westerbork transit camp and Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to educate younger generations. This transition involved partnering with organizations such as the Anne Frank Foundation and the Holocaust Educational Trust, through which she conducted school visits across Britain to deliver testimonies on the Nazi persecution of Jews, including details of her family's deportation in 1943 and the harsh conditions endured by over 50,000 prisoners at Bergen-Belsen by early 1945. Her educational efforts emphasized eyewitness accounts to commemorate the six million Jewish victims of , often highlighting themes of survival through luck and human resilience rather than defining herself solely as a victim. Finkelstein's presentations, which continued for many years and extended to media appearances and discussions with figures like the daughter of in 2004, aimed to foster historical awareness among students and policymakers without overshadowing her prior professional identity.

Personal Life and Relationships

Marriage to Ludwik Finkelstein

Mirjam Wiener married Ludwik Finkelstein, a Polish-born and academic, on an unspecified date in 1957 following their meeting in the previous year. Both were refugees who had fled Nazi persecution—Mirjam from Nazi-occupied after surviving Bergen-Belsen, and Ludwik from Lwów amid the dual threats of Nazi and Soviet occupations—making their union a convergence of shared experiences of displacement and resilience. At the time of their marriage, Mirjam, who had studied chemistry and worked as a , was establishing herself in , while Ludwik pursued advanced studies in engineering and later became a professor of measurement and instrumentation at City University . Their partnership reflected complementary professional paths in science and education, with Ludwik's career in complementing Mirjam's academic background, though specific details of their courtship remain undocumented in public records. The couple settled in , , where they built a family life grounded in intellectual pursuits and mutual support amid the challenges of integrating as Continental European émigrés into British society.

Family and Children

Mirjam Finkelstein and her husband Ludwik had three children: sons (born 1959) and Daniel (born 1962), and daughter Tamara (born 1967). The family settled in , , where they raised the children in a suburban environment emphasizing stability and liberal values, shaped by the parents' shared experiences as refugees from . Finkelstein prioritized her roles as wife and mother, approaching child-rearing with warmth, generosity, and a high degree of tolerance; she rarely scolded the children and stressed among siblings, in-laws, and extended family. Despite her experiences, she avoided burdening her family with trauma, stating that she "lived the so that we don't have to" and rejected competitive narratives of suffering within survivor communities. Her home life reflected this resilience, with spontaneous hospitality and support for Ludwik's career, while she continued teaching locally. In recognition of her deportation, the children later received compensation from the Dutch state railway (NS), which they donated to the Wiener Holocaust Library, honoring their mother's heritage.

Friendship with Anne Frank

Mirjam Wiener (later Finkelstein) and Anne Frank were childhood acquaintances within Amsterdam's German-Jewish refugee community after the Wiener family fled Berlin in 1933. Both girls attended the same Montessori school and participated in Hebrew classes at the Jewish Liberal Community Synagogue, where their sisters also studied together. Their families shared similar backgrounds, with fathers who had served as decorated officers in the German army during World War I, and the children played on the same neighborhood streets in the Rivierenbuurt district. Following the German occupation of the in , both families faced escalating , with the Wieners arrested in June 1943 and deported via to Bergen-Belsen in January 1944. and her arrived at the camp in late October 1944 after transfer from Auschwitz. Mirjam, then aged 11, and her older Ruth observed the Frank sisters disembarking from a cattle truck upon arrival, as recorded by Ruth in her . On December 20, 1944, Ruth noted in her diary a further sighting of Anne and Margot across the camp's barbed wire, where the sisters appeared barefoot, coatless, and in deteriorated condition amid worsening overcrowding and disease. This encounter marked the final time Mirjam and Ruth saw the Franks, who succumbed to typhus in early 1945; Ruth's diary entry has been cited as eyewitness corroboration of Anne Frank's presence and death at Bergen-Belsen. The connection, rooted in pre-war community ties rather than intimate personal friendship, underscored shared experiences of displacement and internment for these Jewish families.

Legacy and Recognition

Contributions to Holocaust Memory

Following her survival of the Holocaust, Mirjam Finkelstein dedicated much of her life to educating others about the atrocities she endured, serving as a witness through affiliations with the Anne Frank Foundation and the Holocaust Educational Trust. She regularly visited schools across Britain, recounting her deportation from Amsterdam to Westerbork transit camp in 1943, her transfer to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and her eventual liberation in January 1945 via a prisoner exchange facilitated by false Paraguayan passports. These testimonies emphasized the roles of courage, family bonds, and sheer luck in survival, while honoring the memory of her mother, Margarete Wiener, who perished shortly after their escape, alongside the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide. Finkelstein's contributions carried unique weight due to her childhood acquaintance with Anne Frank, with whom she shared the same Amsterdam Jewish community, Montessori school, and synagogue Hebrew classes before the war. At Bergen-Belsen in autumn 1944, she and her sisters witnessed the arrival of Anne and Margot Frank, an event corroborated by her sister Ruth's contemporaneous diary entry, providing direct eyewitness corroboration of Anne's existence and fate that has been invoked to refute Holocaust denial claims portraying the Diary of Anne Frank as fabricated. In her school presentations, she highlighted Anne's ordinary teenage interests—such as a shared admiration for popular figures—to humanize the victims and underscore the normalcy shattered by Nazi persecution, as noted in her defense of Anne's cultural references during a 2013 public discussion. Her educational outreach extended into her later years, with active school visits continuing until at least 2016, and included notable encounters like a 2004 meeting with Albert Speer's daughter for a documentary, where Finkelstein demonstrated resilience by engaging empathetically despite the familial ties to . On her 80th birthday in 2013, the Foundation presented her with an original edition of a childhood book, recognizing her enduring role in preserving such personal histories. Through these efforts, Finkelstein not only preserved factual accounts of camp conditions and deportations but also stressed the importance of open societal dialogue to prevent repetition of such traumas, influencing generations via direct testimony rather than abstracted narratives.

Influence Through Family and Publications

Mirjam Finkelstein married Ludwik Finkelstein, a Polish-Jewish engineer and academic who later became Professor of Measurement and Instrumentation at City University , in 1957 after meeting in as fellow refugees. The couple had three children—Daniel, Tamara, and —who grew up in and pursued distinguished careers, with Daniel becoming a for , associate editor, and Conservative peer in the . Through her family, Finkelstein's experiences as a survivor and daughter of , founder of the Wiener Library, contributed to the preservation of Jewish refugee narratives; for instance, the family supported the library's archival efforts, including a digital wall of honour in her and Ludwik's names. Her son amplified her influence through his 2023 family memoir Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival, which details Mirjam's to Bergen-Belsen at age 11, her survival alongside her sisters, and the parallel ordeals of Ludwik's under Soviet , drawing on primary documents and personal accounts to underscore the totalitarian threats of both and Stalinist Russia. The book, published by Doubleday, reached wide audiences via serialization in and public talks, educating readers on the empirical realities of 20th-century persecutions without romanticizing survival, and has been credited with reinforcing causal understandings of ideological extremism's human costs. Daniel has also referenced his mother's testimony in columns and speeches, such as invoking her Bergen-Belsen experiences to critique modern , thereby extending her educational legacy beyond direct testimony. Finkelstein herself contributed oral histories rather than authored books, including a recorded testimony for the Association of Jewish Refugees' Refugee Voices project, where she recounted her pre-war life in , friendship with at the Montessori School, and post-liberation adjustment in . These accounts, archived and accessible since the early 2000s, have influenced education by providing firsthand, unfiltered perspectives on child survivors' resilience, often cited in institutional programs like those of the Holocaust Educational Trust. Her family's curation of online tributes, including essays and obituaries on finkelstein.family launched around 2011–2017, further disseminates these narratives, compiling peer and familial reflections to highlight her role in fostering intergenerational awareness of Nazi and Soviet atrocities.

References

  1. https://www.het.org.uk/news-and-events/613-news-mirjam-finkelstein
  2. https://www.ajrrefugeevoices.org.uk/RefugeeVoices/mirjam-finkelstein
  3. https://www.thejc.com/news/mirjam-finkelstein-holocaust-educator-friend-of-anne-frank-and-survivor-of-bergen-belsen-dies-aged-83-u4xzojw8
  4. http://finkelstein.family/
  5. https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/2020/10/02/459/
  6. http://finkelstein.family/mirjam/my-mothers-life-with-anne-frank/
  7. https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/who-we-are/history/
  8. https://hmd.org.uk/resource/dr-alfred-wiener/
  9. https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-holocaust-museum-that-predates-wwii-londons-wiener-library-turns-90-this-month/
  10. http://finkelstein.family/mirjam/obituary-the-times/
  11. https://www.ajrrefugeevoices.org.uk/camps/westerbork
  12. https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/how-my-extraordinary-mother-survived-belsen-7stzbrn6j
  13. http://finkelstein.family/mirjam/daniel-memories-of-mum/
  14. https://www.timesofisrael.com/caught-between-hitler-and-stalin-one-familys-miraculous-tale-of-survival/
  15. http://finkelstein.family/ludwik/obituary-the-times-2/
  16. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/8nGUKPNNdyjvCUnpsIQCjMYMsbs/appointments
  17. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/mjSEWBP68plbaXCbtUcZn2JG0Tg/appointments
  18. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/0BTa6Gw1Tm0p7IY262LTEUiRctY/appointments
  19. https://wienerholocaustlibrary.org/what-we-do/support-our-work/donate/digital-wall-of-honour/mirjam-and-ludwik-finkelstein/
  20. https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/mum-used-to-gently-say-they-made-us-buy-these-yellow-stars/
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