Overview
- Brief Narrative
- Caliper used by 17 year old Sari Marmor (Shari Fine) when she worked as forced labor in an underground Luftwaffe factory and supply depot in the Black Forest near Stuttgart, Germany. She was a team foreman and worked on a lathe making screws. The caliper was the only thing she took with her on the death march ordered to evacuate the camp. Sari and her family were deported by the Germans from Bistrita, Romania, to Auschwitz-Birkenau in April 1944. She and her 2 sisters, Ester and Chaya, were selected for forced labor; her parents, Salomon and Ita, and her brother, Shmaye, were selected for the gas chambers. The sisters were transferred to other camps in Poland, then, in September, 1944, to the factory in Germany. As the Allied forces neared, the prisoners were forced on a death march. They were liberated by the US Army near Fussen on April 29, 1945. Sari and her sisters were taken to Feldafing displaced persons camp.
- Date
-
use:
1944 September-1945 February
- Geography
-
use:
Luftwaffe Nachschublager (Air Force Supply Depot);
Stuttgart (Germany)
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of George J. and Shari Fine
- Contributor
-
Subject:
Shari Fine
Subject: George J. Fine
- Biography
-
Sari Sheindl Marmor was born on April 1, 1927, in Bistrita, (Bistrița-Năsăud), Romania. Her parents, Salomon and Ita Karpeles, owned a general store. Shari had six siblings: Josef, b. 1912, Hershl, b.1922, Ester, b.1924, Chaya (Helen), b.1925, Itzhak, b. 1929, and Shmaye, b.1932. Hungary was under the influence of Nazi Germany throughout the 1930s and in November 1940, they joined the Axis Alliance. Racial laws, much like Germany’s Nuremberg laws, were enacted; Jews, who had been full citizens of Hungary since 1867, were stripped of their civil rights and excluded from many professions. Jewish males were obligated to serve in forced labor battalions. After Hungary entered the war in 1941, most of these battalions were involved in dangerous war-related construction work under brutal conditions. In 1943, Shari’s brother, Josef, was taken for a forced labor brigade; her brother, Hershl was taken in 1944. In March 1944, the Bistrita Jews were forced into a ghetto. And in April, the family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. They were held for a while in an open field, then she, Chaya, and Ester were separated from her parents and youngest brother. The girls were selected for forced labor and told to go right; her parents and brother were selected for death and told to go left. Sari was tattooed with number A18731. They were assigned to Birkenau IIb near the Kanada warehouse, where the property of the victims was sorted for shipment to Germany.
The sisters were transferred to Płaszów concentration camp, but later were returned to Auschwitz block 36. In September 1944, Shari was transferred to a camp near Stuttgart, where she worked in the machine shop of an underground Luftwaffe Nachschublager [Air Force supply depot]. In March 1945, the camp was evacuated and the prisoners were forced on a death march. They were liberated by the United States Army near Füssen, Germany on April 29, 1945. Shari and her sisters were taken to the Feldafing displaced persons camp, where Sari was a member of a Yiddish and Hungarian theater group. All of Shari’s siblings, except for Shmaye, survived the war. In September 1948, she sailed on board the SS Samaria to Quebec, Canada. She met and married George Fine (Getzel Fingerhut), in Montreal, Canada, in 1951. George, originally from Lithuania, had survived several labor camps, Dachau concentration camp, and a death march during the Holocaust.
Getzel Jurgis Fingerhut (George Fine) was born on December 24, 1922, in Siauliai, Lithuania. His father, Josef, b. 1893, was a certified locksmith, as well as a professional skater and ballroom dancer, who had served in the German Navy on a mine sweeper during World War I (1914-1918). His mother, Miriam Geselsohn, owned a delicatessen. He had one brother, Eliahu, born in August 1927. George was enrolled at Polytechnic Engineering College in Kovno, Lithuania, during the period from June 1940-May 1941 when Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union. When Germany declared war on the USSR and invaded Lithuania in June 1941, George returned to join his family. The Lithuanians had carried out violent riots against the Jewish population before and after the German invasion. Now they joined with the Germans Einsatzgruppen [mobile killing squads] in murdering thousands of Jews. In August 1941, George's family was forced into the Siauliai ghetto, which was transformed into a concentration camp in September 1943. George was sent to the Linkaiciai labor camp, where he unloaded ammunition for the Wehrmacht. Later he was transferred to Baciunai labor camp to work mining peat for fuel the electric power plant. In early 1944, he worked in the outskirts of Siauliai at Heeres-Kraftfahr-Park 562, a Wehrmacht military vehicle repair depot. On July 21, 1944, the Germans deported the remaining Jews from the ghetto to Stutthof concentration camp. George’s father made sure his two sons stayed together, and in early August 1944, the three of them were transferred to Kaufering Camp 10, in Utting near Dachau, where George worked repairing trains and operating the diesel shovel. His paternal uncle, Lejbl, was in the same group. Most of the otehr inmates were also from George's home town, Siauliai. In April 1945, the prisoners were forced on a death march as the camp was evacuated. They were used as a shield to protect the German guards from Allied bombing. The United States Army liberated them on April 30, 1945, near Wolfranhausen, near Munich, Germany. His mother had died during the evacuation of Stutthof. George, his father, brother, and uncle were settled in the Feldafing displaced persons camp. George eventually returned to school at Polytechnic Engineering College in Munich. His brother, Eliahu, attended dental school. In 1947, Josef remarried a woman he knew before the war, and emigrated to Montreal, Canada. In April 1949, George left from Bremerhaven for Montreal, aboard the SS Samaria. He married Sari Marmor in 1951. Sari, originally from Romania, was a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, a Hasag slave labor camp, as well as a death march. Josef passed away, age 81, in 1974.
Physical Details
- Classification
-
Tools and Equipment
- Category
-
Measuring instruments
- Object Type
-
Calipers (lcsh)
- Physical Description
- Silver-colored, metal bar. On the left end of the bar are a set of inside and outside jaws which set the caliper to measure either the exterior or interior diameter of an object. A carriage slides on the top of the bar when the locking screw is loosened. On the inside edge of the carriage are incised lines which correspond to inch and millimeter markings on the bar, as the carriage slides to the left and right.
- Dimensions
- overall: Height: 2.625 inches (6.668 cm) | Width: 6.500 inches (16.51 cm)
- Materials
- overall : metal
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- No restrictions on access
- Conditions on Use
- No restrictions on use
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Death marches--Germany--Biography. Holocaust survivors--Canada--Biography. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Romania--Personal narratives, Jewish. Jews--Persecutions--Romania--Biography. Slave labor--Germany--Biography. Underground factories--Germany--Biography. Women concentration camp inmates--Germany--Biography.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The caliper was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by George and Shari Fine.
- Record last modified:
- 2022-07-28 18:28:51
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn516893
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Also in George and Shari Fine collection
The collection consists of artifacts and documents related to the experience of Getzel Fingerhut (George Fine) in Dachau concentration camp and Sari Marmor (Fine) as a slave laborer in Poland during the Holocaust and in displaced persons camps and Canada after the war.
Date: 1945-1956
Folding knife made from a screwdriver in a concentration camp by an inmate
Object
Pocketknife created by Getzel Fingerhut (George Fine), age 22, during his imprisonment in Kaufering X concentration camp, known as Dachau 10, where he worked repairing locomotives. The handle is repurposed from a screwdriver and the blade is handmade. He hid the knife under his pants, tied with string above his calf. In August 1941, George and his family were interned in the ghetto in Siauliai, Lithuania, by the Germans, after they occupied the area. George worked in a series of forced labor camps until July 1944, when the remaining Jews in the ghetto were deported to Stutthof concentration camp. George was able to stay with his father, Josef, and his brother, Eliahu, when they were transferred to Dachau in August. This camp was evacuated by death march in April 1945. The prisoners were used to shield the German guards from Allied bombers. They were liberated by US troops on April 30, near Wolfranhausen, in Bavaria, and re-settled in Feldafing displaced persons camp.
George and Shari Fine papers
Document
The papers consist of newspaper clippings concerning the establishment of the state of Israel including: "Fun Jidiszn Lebn" DP newspaper published in Munich, Germany, November 1946; "Yom Hamedina", the Day of the State, a joint publication of Israel's newspapers, May 14, 1948; "Forward", article about the first hanging in the Siauliai ghetto, June 13, 1955; Time magazine clipping about David Ben Gurion, dated 1955-1956; and a supplement to the New York Times celebrating the sixth anniversary of the state of Israel, May 16, 1954.